Search for desktop *BSD (part 2): Intel Centrino 6235

Last week I wrote first part about how do I search for some BSD distro for my laptop. I wrote what kind of laptop it is, HW, etc. You can go and read it here.

In this new post I wanna talk about few things I made after. 

First of all, the most important thing is internet connection. And here is where problem starts. At my current dorm I have only WiFi. Laptop has Intel(R) Centrino(R) Advanced-N 6235. So I Googled it (combinations like BSD, FreeBSD, NetBSD and name of card).  I might missed something, but I found N 6235 connected only to FreeBSD and OpenBSD (and their derivates). 

FreeBSD forum post says: 

To get back on topic, here's the output for FreeBSD 10.0-CURRENT #7 r243502M: Sat Nov 24 22:51:00 EET 2012
# svn diff

Code:

Index: sys/dev/iwn/if_iwn.c
===================================================================
--- sys/dev/iwn/if_iwn.c        (revision 243502)
+++ sys/dev/iwn/if_iwn.c        (working copy)
@@ -93,6 +93,7 @@
        { 0x8086, 0x0886, "Intel Centrino Wireless-N + WiMAX 6150"      },
        { 0x8086, 0x0896, "Intel Centrino Wireless-N 130"               },
        { 0x8086, 0x0887, "Intel Centrino Wireless-N 130"               },
+       { 0x8086, 0x088e, "Intel Centrino Advanced-N 6235"              },
        { 0x8086, 0x08ae, "Intel Centrino Wireless-N 100"               },
        { 0x8086, 0x08af, "Intel Centrino Wireless-N 100"               },
        { 0x8086, 0x4229, "Intel Wireless WiFi Link 4965"               },
Index: sys/modules/iwnfw/iwn6000g2b/Makefile
===================================================================
--- sys/modules/iwnfw/iwn6000g2b/Makefile       (revision 243502)
+++ sys/modules/iwnfw/iwn6000g2b/Makefile       (working copy)
@@ -1,6 +1,6 @@
 # $FreeBSD$
 
 KMOD=  iwn6000g2bfw
-IMG=   iwlwifi-6000g2b-17.168.5.2
+IMG=   iwlwifi-6000g2b-18.168.6.1
 
 .include <bsd.kmod.mk>

In the thread, there are also ways how to fix support in FreeBSD 9. But I am pretty much lazy  so I decided I will go on with trying FreeBSD 10. According to the post, from r243502M it should be supported. I downloaded R251797 but during install it didn't seems to recognize N 6235. Man iwn did not include N 6235 in supported list too. I wanted to try go /sys/dev/iwn/if_iwn.c to see what's there. But cd sys/ gave do not exist error. I could see it with ls / but I wasn't able to google why is that, except that it is something with kernel (probably). I guess a lot of readers can explain this to me ;]


So I went with OpenBSD. New version 5.3 "Added support for the Intel Centrino Advanced-N 6235 to iwn(4) ". I played with pendrive so I donwloaded live USB image from http://liveusb-openbsd.sourceforge.net/. I booted to live system and went man iwn. 6235 was not mentioned there, but there was a line about using fw_update to be able to run driver.

fw_update -v told me that it is installing iwn firmware, but ifconfig iwn0 scan gave me error that could not read firmware iwn-6030. So no luck again

There might be something I did wrong, but I really don't know what. Any ideas wellcome!

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JH

software developer - guitar player - poetry lover