Step 1: Install NDIS code
cd /sys/modules/ndis && make && make install
Step 2: Figure out what hardware you have to support
This can be annoying . . . vendors ship different components in their machines, along with driver disks with all the possible variants of drivers, so you have to find the right driver. Unless you're a big hardware weenie, you're not sure, and pulling the right driver from the vendor can be hard.
If yours is a PCI device, you can ask pciconf to list what is on the system, and collate it with a vendor/device information database:
pciconf -lv
And here I see:
none6@pci2:4:0: class=0x028000 card=0x00031028 chip=0x432014e4 rev=0x03 hdr=0x00
vendor = 'Broadcom Corporation'
device = 'BCM4306 802.11b/g Wireless LAN Controller'
class = network
Step 3: Go Get the Win2K/XP Driver
You have to pull this off the CDROM or a web site yourself. Bonus points when the driver is packaged in a self-extracting archive, then you have to borrow a Windows machine to get the .sys and .inf files. Joy!
In this case, Dell re-brands the Broadcom driver as a Dell driver, so I download the "Dell _Wireless (US) WLAN Network Adapter Card" from their web site, extract the files on my Windows box, and select the bcmwl5.inf and bcmwl5.sys …
Step 4: Copy those Drivers to /sys/modules/if_ndis
# ls *.inf *.sys
bcmwl5.inf bcmwl5.sys bcmwl5a.inf bcmwlntp.sys
# cp bcmwl5.* /sys/modules/if_ndis
# ls /sys/modules/if_ndis
Makefile bcmwl5.inf bcmwl5.sys
# cd /sys/modules/if_ndis
Step 5: Magic
Take a deep breath, stretch your arms, think a happy though, and:
# ndiscvt -i bcmwl5.inf -s bcmwl5.sys -o ndis_driver_data.h
ndiscvt: line 13: e: syntax error.
ÿþ[#
Okay, don't panic! I have seen this before. The ndiscvt works on ASCII files, but many a crafty driver has been distributing stuff in Unicode. If I look at bcmwl5.inf, I see:
# hd bcmwl5.inf | head -3
00000000 ff fe 3b 00 3b 00 0d 00 0a 00 3b 00 3b 00 20 00 |..;.;.....;.;. .|
00000010 62 00 63 00 6d 00 77 00 6c 00 35 00 2e 00 69 00 |b.c.m.w.l.5...i.|
00000020 6e 00 66 00 0d 00 0a 00 3b 00 3b 00 0d 00 0a 00 |n.f.....;.;.....|
For your edification, if a file looks like null-padded ASCII characters, then it is probably UTF-16.
# iconv -c -f utf-16 -t ascii bcmwl5.inf > bcmwl5.inf.ascii
# head -3 bcmwl5.inf.ascii
;;
;; bcmwl5.inf
;;
# ndiscvt -i bcmwl5.inf.ascii -s bcmwl5.sys -o ndis_driver_data.h
Well, that was easy.
Step 6: Compile, Install
Basically:
make && make install
Load the module:
kldload ndis
kldload if_ndis
And, see if you have an Ethernet device:
# ifconfig ndis0
ndis0: flags=8802<BROADCAST,SIMPLEX,MULTICAST> mtu 1500
ether ff:ff:ff:ff:ff:ff
media: IEEE 802.11 Wireless Ethernet autoselect
status: no carrier
ssid ""
channel -1 authmode OPEN powersavemode OFF powersavesleep 100
rtsthreshold 2312 protmode CTS
wepmode OFF weptxkey 1
(You shouldn't ever have that as a MAC address, unless you're blogging sensitive data to the Internet. ;)
Loading NDIS at Boot
Once you are happy with your NDIS, add a line like this to /boot/loader.conf, which will cause the kernel to load your new module at boot time:
if_ndis_load="YES"
At this point, you're ready to get back to your FreeBSD Handbook if you need further information.
