On Acer laptops, we need a special driver to "software enable" some peripherals like WiFi and Bluetooth, otherwise the peripheral won't work even if the correct driver is loaded and recognizes it. For better understanding, I copy here a part of AcerHK documentation: "Q: I know that wireless hardware is supported on my Aspire 1690/TravelMate4600, but I cannot get it to work, why? A: On these model (and similar) the wireless hardware is controlled on two different levels. One is controlled by acerhk's xxxled file, the other level is controlled by the key itself. To actually activate the hardware you need to write '1' to the xxled file and you need to press the corresponding button. Example: echo 1 > /proc/driver/acerhk/wirelessled <if still not working, press Wlan button>" Fix: The problem is already fixed on Linux on i386 and AMD64 platforms through the following drivers: AcerHK for i386 http://www.informatik.hu-berlin.de/~tauber/acerhk/ Acer_Acpi for AMD64 http://www.archernar.co.uk/acer_acpi/acer_acpi_main.html How-To-Repeat: The problem can be repeated on any recent Acer's laptop.
As far as I know, FreeBSD's kernels seems to lack the feature of enabling-disabling wireless radio. I think this bug is connected with i386/94141
State Changed From-To: open->suspended Mark this as a feature request and suspend it awaiting a patch from an interested party. To submitter: have you tried running the Windows drivers under the NDISulator?
Hi, actually I haven't tried with NDISulator, but I don't think it will help. Even in Windows, for enabling/disabling WiFi radio we have to install a program from Acer, called "Launch Manager". Under FreeBSD, I tried this trick for making WiFi driver (in my case, if_ath) working: 1)Launch Linux 2)Enable wireless radio through AcerHK driver (echo 1 > /proc/driver/acerhk/wirelessled) 3)*Soft* reboot into FreeBSD If WiFi configuration is correct, it will work as it should be. For discovering if the WiFi radio is actually on, I followed this procedure: 1)AP turned on 2)Run this command: ifconfig ath0 list ap If nothing is shown, WLAN hardware is disabled. Next days I'll try with NDISulator and report.
Even with NDISulator I think it won't work. Here is it a little HowTo from Gentoo Linux: http://gentoo-wiki.com/HARDWARE_Acer_Aspire_5024#WiFi Even with NDISWrapper, acerhk / acer_acpi are always needed for enabling wireless hardware. I just hope some developer will make a port for FreeBSD. Best regards
The same thing is neccessery with Fujitsu-Siemens AMILO A1650G Turion64 same driver - acer_acpi is needed for enabling atheros chipset So for now i cant use bsd on my laptop with network. regards Artur
Responsible Changed From-To: freebsd-bugs->adrian I'll take a crack at this; I have some relevant hardware.
batch change: For bugs that match the following - Status Is In progress AND - Untouched since 2018-01-01. AND - Affects Base System OR Documentation DO: Reset to open status. Note: I did a quick pass but if you are getting this email it might be worthwhile to double check to see if this bug ought to be closed.