Configuring Wifi Firmware at Installation for OpenBSD
Joseph D. Marhee
Posted on February 2, 2021
If you are installing OpenBSD on a laptop, and when you find (or are aware already) that your Wifi network card does not have the required firmware available, it's a very quick fix to get the required package.
First, you'll need to drop into a shell, which you can do by hitting CTRL+C
from the Installer at this point (or if you're booting for the first time, hit (S)
at the prompt when beginning the installer).
If you have a wired connection available, you can plug in, and proceed to the #
prompt, and run:
pkg_add -i http://firmware.openbsd.org/firmware/${VERSION}/${DRIVER}-firmware-${DRIVER_VERSION}.tgz
So, in my case, the iwn-6000
firmware was unavailable, so I used the url: http://firmware.openbsd.org/firmware/6.8/iwn-firmware-5.11p1.tgz
You can, then, proceed, to configure the WiFi connection:
ifconfig iwn0 nwid ID wpakey PASSPHRASE
If, like me, you did not have a wired connection available, I downloaded the above archive, and placed it on a USB drive. Once the USB drive is in the OpenBSD machine, you can get the device name:
sysctl hw.disknames
and you'll see an output like:
hw.disknames=wd0:3af96a8b7d621ab2,cd0:,sd0:
and you can confirm the model/ID of your USB drive before proceeding like:
disklabel sd0
and get the partition ID containign the archive (i.e. /dev/sd0j
) and then mount it:
mkdir -p /mnt/usb; mount /dev/rsd0j /mnt/usb
If you receive an error that a block device is required, replace the USB path with /dev/sd0j
.
Then, enter /mnt/usb
, and you can install the archive:
pkg_add -i iwn-firmware-5.11p1.tgz
and configure the connection:
ifconfig iwn0 nwid ID wpakey PASSPHRASE
Once you confirm you can reach the network, you can resume the installation by running install
.
Posted on February 2, 2021
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