Previous INDEX Next
Setting up httpd on OpenBSD 5.7 Xfce4 multiple monitors (again)

OpenBSD support for Netgear WNA1000Mv2 USB wireless adapter

After installing OpenBSD on a Dell Latitude E6500 I wanted to add a wireless capability to the laptop, as the inbuilt wireless adapter is not supported: 

  "Broadcom BCM4315" rev 0x01 at pci2 dev 0 function 0 not configured

After a little research into the USB wireless adapters supported by OpenBSD, I purchased a Netgear WNA1000M. With the adapter inserted I booted the OS, to find to my horror: 

  ugen0 at uhub1 port 4 "Realtek WNA1000Mv2" rev 2.00/2.00 addr 2

Thanks guys! More in hope than expectation, I decided to add the device ID to the relevant driver urtwn and see if that would enable the adapter to (a) be recognised and (b) work.

First, how to find the device ID on OpenBSD? This is performed by: 

  usbdevs -v

which returned: 

  port 4 addr 2: high speed, power 500 mA, config 1, 
    WNA1000Mv2(0x9043), Realtek(0x0846), rev 2.00, iSerialNumber 00e04c000001

Hmm, a device ID of 0x9043 wasn't too far away from the device ID of previous adapter version, 0x9041. Just maybe...

Armed with the device ID, the list of USB devices in /usr/src/sys/dev/usb/usbdevs can be augmented, and the new device definition added to the list of devices to recognise in the driver code at /usr/src/sys/dev/usb/if_urtwn.c. Here are the diffs against the OpenBSD 5.7 source: 

  --- usbdevs	Thu Aug 20 13:13:04 2015
  +++ /usr/src/sys/dev/usb/usbdevs	Thu Aug 20 13:14:54 2015
  @@ -3095,6 +3095,7 @@
   product NETGEAR WNA1100		    0x9030	WNA1100
   product NETGEAR WNA1000		    0x9040	WNA1000
   product NETGEAR WNA1000M	        0x9041	WNA1000M
  +product NETGEAR WNA1000Mv2	    0x9043	WNA1000Mv2

   /* Netgear(2) products */
   product NETGEAR2 MA101		0x4100	MA101

and 

  --- if_urtwn.c	Thu Aug 20 13:13:04 2015
  +++ /usr/src/sys/dev/usb/if_urtwn.c	Thu Aug 20 13:17:32 2015
  @@ -110,6 +110,7 @@
      { USB_VENDOR_IODATA,	    USB_PRODUCT_IODATA_WNG150UM },
      { USB_VENDOR_IODATA,	    USB_PRODUCT_IODATA_RTL8192CU },
      { USB_VENDOR_NETGEAR,	    USB_PRODUCT_NETGEAR_WNA1000M },
  +	  { USB_VENDOR_NETGEAR,	    USB_PRODUCT_NETGEAR_WNA1000Mv2 },
      { USB_VENDOR_NETGEAR,	    USB_PRODUCT_NETGEAR_RTL8192CU },
      { USB_VENDOR_NETGEAR4,	USB_PRODUCT_NETGEAR4_RTL8188CU },
      { USB_VENDOR_NETWEEN,	    USB_PRODUCT_NETWEEN_RTL8192CU },

The initial attempt to recompile the kernel failed at if_urtwn.c, complaining that USB_PRODUCT_NETGEAR_WNA1000Mv2 was undefined. Looks like the usbdevs.h and usbdevs_data.h files had not been re-generated following the addition to usbdevs. I manually ran the Makefile in /usr/src/sys/dev/usb and restarted the kernel build. All ran OK.

I rebooted into the new kernel and, lo: 

  urtwn0 at uhub1 port 4 "Realtek WNA1000Mv2" rev 2.00/2.00 addr 2

After running ifconfig to configure the adapter, I had a working wireless connection. 

   urtwn0: flags=8843<UP,BROADCAST,RUNNING,SIMPLEX,MULTICAST> mtu 1500
           lladdr a4:2b:8c:f0:31:2e
           priority: 4
           groups: wlan egress
           media: IEEE802.11 autoselect (OFDM54 mode 11g)
           status: active
           ieee80211: nwid hydrus chan 11 bssid 00:1d:68:e9:65:d5 -66dBm nwkey <not displayed>
           inet 192.168.0.18 netmask 0xffffff00 broadcast 192.168.0.255

I submitted the information and diffs to the misc@openbsd.org mailling list; two days later the changes had been applied to current. How's that for service!

I then figured I would upgrade the machine to current so that I didn't have to maintain the patches for the driver. I used cvs to update the source tree to HEAD and rebuilt the kernel without issues. However, this was not the case when building the userland, where I encountered this error: 

  vpaes-x86_64.S: Assembler messages:
  vpaes-x86_64.S:172: Error: no such instruction: `palignr $12,%xmm5,%xmm5'
  vpaes-x86_64.S:298: Error: no such instruction: `palignr $8,%xmm6,%xmm0'
  vpaes-x86_64.S:436: Error: no such instruction: `palignr $15,%xmm8,%xmm1'
  vpaes-x86_64.S:437: Error: no such instruction: `palignr $15,%xmm8,%xmm8'
  vpaes-x86_64.S:442: Error: no such instruction: `palignr $1,%xmm0,%xmm0'
  *** Error 1 in lib/libcrypto/crypto (<bsd.lib.mk>:120 'vpaes-x86_64.o':
  <at> cc -g  -c -DDSO_DLFCN -DHAVE_DLFCN_H -DHAVE_FUNOPEN -DLIBRESSL_INTE...)
  *** Error 1 in lib/libcrypto (<bsd.subdir.mk>:48 'all')
  *** Error 1 in lib (<bsd.subdir.mk>:48 'all')
  *** Error 1 in /usr/src (Makefile:79 'build')

Others had encountered this. The reason is that the version of binutils installed on the running userland was too old, 2.15 rather than 2.17, which is required now. However, the real reason for my problem was that I had not followed the true way to move to current, which is to install from the latest snapshot first and then update the source tree.

In this particular case, the workaround was relatively simple: 

  cd /usr/src/gnu/usr.bin/binutils-2.17
  make -f Makefile.bsd-wrapper && make -f Makefile.bsd-wrapper install

After this, the userland build ran successfully.

Previous INDEX Next
Setting up httpd on OpenBSD 5.7 Xfce4 multiple monitors (again)

GNU/Linux Logo