Bug 216470 - netstat -inw -f link does not show wireless interfaces anymore
Summary: netstat -inw -f link does not show wireless interfaces anymore
Status: Closed Not A Bug
Alias: None
Product: Base System
Classification: Unclassified
Component: bin (show other bugs)
Version: 11.0-RELEASE
Hardware: Any Any
: --- Affects Some People
Assignee: freebsd-bugs (Nobody)
URL:
Keywords: regression
Depends on:
Blocks:
 
Reported: 2017-01-25 23:21 UTC by andywhite
Modified: 2017-01-28 09:18 UTC (History)
2 users (show)

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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 freebsd_triage 2017-01-27 07:46:46 UTC 
Notify committer of r261207.
Comment 2 Gleb Smirnoff freebsd_committer freebsd_triage 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.