Re: Call for Test and Review: bwn(4) - another Broadcom Wireless driver

2010/3/1 Weongyo Jeong <weongyo.jeong_at_gmail.com>:
> On Sun, Feb 28, 2010 at 08:45:32PM +0100, Miki wrote:
>> Hi,
>>
>> Thanks for the work !
>>
>> I have some problems here when I try to create a wlan interface :
>> bwn_v4_ucode5: could not load firmware image, error 2
>> bwn0: the fw file(bwn_v4_ucode5) not found
>
> Did you try to UP the interface withload loading bwn_v4_ucode.ko?  If
> yes currently bwn(4) doesn't automatically load firmware module so you
> need to do it by hand.
>
>  # kldload bwn_v4_ucode

OK I have loaded bwn_v4_ucode before if_bwn and it works,
my bad, I should have read the man page more carefully.

>
> The patch for this is ready to commit and it'll be happened soon.
>
>> I have installed bwn-firmware-kmod from ports but the only files I have in
>> /boot/modules are bwn_v4_lp_ucode.ko and bwn_v4_ucode.ko. So I tried to
>> copy bwn_v4_ucode to bwn_v4_ucode5 and it seems to work : wlan0 is
>> created, I can associate to an open Access Point and obtain a DHCP lease.
>> But if I try to do some network IO (browsing the web) the interface hang
>> (I cannot obtain a lease anymore).
>
> I have a exact same device like you have but I didn't encounter this
> issue.
>
> Are there any messages from bwn(4) when you the interface becomes hang?
> One more question, after the interface hang, does the system be hang
> also?

I have no messages in the log (appart bwn0: need multicast update callback).
In fact it's not a hang, it happens only with the AP that permits me
to have a web
access. I have another AP (sitting next to me) and I don't have the
same behavior :
I can have and renew my dhcp lease multiple times and configure the AP with its
web interface. With the "buggy" AP I can have a dhcp lease only once and nothing
more. If I destroy and recreate the wlan interface the same thing happens.
I have no such a problem with if_bwi and this AP.

>
> One thing you can do is that trying the device with PIO mode not DMA
> mode using the following tunable variable:
>
>  hw.bwn.usedma
>
> Its default value is 1 to enable DMA operation so if you set it 0, PIO
> mode would be used and could see the message like below:
>
>  bwn0: PIO
>
> Could you please test with it?
>

Setting hw.bwn.usedma=0 in loader.conf make no differences

by the way, I need to switch from if_bwn to if_bwi to make some test
and post the results here, but I have this error message :
firmware_register: cannot register image bwi_v3_b0g0initvals5, firmware
table full!
is this normal ?

Thanks for your help !