Bug 216470

Summary:	netstat -inw -f link does not show wireless interfaces anymore
Product:	Base System	Reporter:	andywhite
Component:	bin	Assignee:	freebsd-bugs (Nobody) <bugs>
Status:	Closed Not A Bug
Severity:	Affects Some People	CC:	FreeBSD, glebius
Priority:	---	Keywords:	regression
Version:	11.0-RELEASE
Hardware:	Any
OS:	Any

Description andywhite 2017-01-25 23:21:45 UTC

in freebsd 8

$ netstat -inw -f link

would include wireless network devices like this

ath0*  2290 <Link#4>      xx:xx:xx:xx:xx:xx        0     0     0        0     0     0

in freebsd 11, this does not work anymore. I have not tested freebsd 9 or 10.  

I suspect this happened in change r261207

Comment 1 Mark Linimon freebsd_committer

2017-01-27 07:46:46 UTC

Notify committer of r261207.

Comment 2 Gleb Smirnoff freebsd_committer

2017-01-27 16:05:39 UTC

Yes, because these interfaces do not exist since FreeBSD 6, albeit ghosts of them were still seen in ifconfig or netstat til FreeBSD 11. Your quotation from FreeBSD 8 clearly displays that all counters on this "interface" are zeroes.

The device ath0 still exist, and the actual interfaces are wlanX.

Comment 3 Shane 2017-01-28 09:18:18 UTC

For info - this is a known change in 11.0

From 11.0 release notes -

The wireless network stack has been modified to no longer show physical wireless devices by default. In order to view available wireless devices on the system, run sysctl net.wlan.devices. 

see base r287197 for the commit to this.

So now wlan0 will be visible but ath0 will only be listed by sysctl or in dmesg, it may also show up in some log messages from the kernel.