MALO(4) FreeBSD Kernel Interfaces Manual MALO(4)
NAME
malo - Marvell Libertas IEEE 802.11b/g wireless network device
SYNOPSIS
malo* at pci?
DESCRIPTION
The malo driver provides support for Marvell Libertas
88W8335/88W8310/88W8385 based PCI network adapters. The second
generation 88W8335/88W8310 chipsets support 802.11b/g.
These are the modes the malo driver can operate in:
BSS mode Also known as infrastructure mode, this is used when
associating with an access point, through which all
traffic passes. This mode is the default.
monitor mode In this mode the driver is able to receive packets without
associating with an access point. This disables the
internal receive filter and enables the card to capture
packets from networks which it wouldn't normally have
access to, or to scan for access points.
The malo driver can be configured to use Wired Equivalent Privacy (WEP)
or Wi-Fi Protected Access (WPA-PSK and WPA2-PSK). WPA is the de facto
encryption standard for wireless networks. It is strongly recommended
that WEP not be used as the sole mechanism to secure wireless
communication, due to serious weaknesses in it. The malo driver relies
on the software 802.11 stack for both encryption and decryption of data
frames.
The malo driver can be configured at runtime with ifconfig(8) or on boot
with ifconfig.if(5).
FILES
The driver needs a set of firmware files which are loaded when an
interface is brought up:
/libdata/firmware/malo/malo8335-h
/libdata/firmware/malo/malo8335-m
/libdata/firmware/malo/malo8338
/libdata/firmware/malo/malo8385-h
/libdata/firmware/malo/malo8385-m
These firmware files are not free because Marvell refuses to grant
distribution rights. As a result, even though OpenBSD includes the
driver, the firmware files cannot be included and users have to download
these files on their own.
A prepackaged version of the firmware, designed to be used with
pkg_add(1), can be found at:
http://www.nazgul.ch/malo/malo-firmware-1.4.tgz
HARDWARE
The following cards are among those supported by the malo driver:
Card Chip Bus Standard
Netgear WG311v3 88W8335 PCI b/g
Tenda TWL542P 88W8335 PCI b/g
EXAMPLES
The following ifconfig.if(5) example configures malo0 to join whatever
network is available on boot, using WEP key "0x1deadbeef1", channel 11,
obtaining an IP address using DHCP:
dhcp NONE NONE NONE nwkey 0x1deadbeef1 chan 11
Join an existing BSS network, "my_net":
# ifconfig malo0 192.168.1.1 netmask 0xffffff00 nwid my_net
NOTES
Contrary to the driver on OpenBSD, this driver currently does not work on
PCMCIA/CARDBUS.
SEE ALSO
arp(4), ifmedia(4), intro(4), netintro(4), pci(4), ifconfig.if(5),
hostapd(8), ifconfig(8)
AUTHORS
The malo driver was first written by Claudio Jeker <
[email protected]>
and Marcus Glocker <
[email protected]> and appeared first in
OpenBSD 4.1. NetBSD porting was done by Arnaud Degroote
<
[email protected]>.
FreeBSD 14.1-RELEASE-p8 July 30, 2012 FreeBSD 14.1-RELEASE-p8