FreeBSD on a Dell E7450

Peter Smith

For the recent Research Bazaar, I needed a laptop with Python, R, bash, etc. So, having borrowed a laptop from our excellent tech people, I immediately went for my OS of choice, FreeBSD. A pretty straight forward install, except I needed to get the WiFi networking working.

That took a little while to figure out as, at first, the WiFi chip set seemed unsupported and getting an external USB WiFi adapter working was challenging as most of those seem to be unsupported too.

Anyway, this was what I did to get a reliable WiFi setup.

First, I needed the drivers for the WiFi chipset in the Dell E7450. It uses an Intel 7265. In the latest version of FreeBSD there are drivers but they need to be loaded into the kernel. So, in /boot/loader.conf I added the lines:

if_iwm_load="YES"
iw3160fw_load="YES"
iw7260fw_load="YES"
iw7265fw_load="YES"
iw8000cfw_load="YES"

All of those drivers are needed. Just loading the iw7265fw module does not work.

The interface for the WiFi is not created automatically during the boot, but we can fix that in /etc/rc.conf, by adding the lines:

wlans_iwm0="wlan0"
ifconfig_wlan0="WPA DHCP"

Those two lines create the interface and tells FreeBSD to use good old DHCP on it (you could use a static address etc if you liked) and to use wpa_supplicant to configure the WiFi. Of course, now we need to configure the WiFi.

In /etc/wpa_supplicant.conf, I added the lines:

network={
ssid="home-ssid"
scan_ssid="1"
psk="home password"
}
network={
ssid="UoA-WiFi"
scan_ssid="1"
key_mgmt=WPA-EAP
identity="psmi045"
password="MyPassword"
eap=PEAP
phase1="peaplabel=0"
phase2="auth=MSCHAPV2"
}

The first "network" block, sets things up for my home WiFi network. All that needs changing for a simple WPA situation is setting the SSID and the PSK (password). The second "network" block is for use with the university's WiFi infrastructure; that needs an ID and a password. With a few tweaks, a similar block could be used for EDUROAM, e.g., by adding:

network={
ssid="eduroam"
scan_ssid="1"
key_mgmt=WPA-EAP
identity="psmi045@auckland.ac.nz"
password="MyPassword"
eap=PEAP
phase1="peaplabel=0"
phase2="auth=MSCHAPV2"
}

Then it's a matter of rebooting. During sorting out all of this, I created a script to allow me to try stuff out without rebooting all the time. My WiFi.sh looked like:

ifconfig wlan create wlandev imw0 ssid UoA-WiFi
wpa_supplicant -i wlan0 -c /etc/wpa_supplicant.
sleep 20
dhclient wlan0
ifconfig wlan0

I hope this all helps anyone who ends in a similar situation of needing to get WiFi working on a Dell laptop … that said, the various different models of Dell seem to use a variety of chipsets, so you might need to look that up first.

I would like to say this is all my own work, but the truth is that it is a collection of information from around the web.