malo(4) - NetBSD Manual Pages

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MALO(4)                 NetBSD 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 genera-
     tion 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 asso-
                    ciating 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 communica-
     tion, 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 inter-
     face 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 dis-
     tribution 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 <claudio@openbsd.org>
     and Marcus Glocker <mglocker@openbsd.org> and appeared first in
     OpenBSD 4.1.  NetBSD porting was done by Arnaud Degroote
     <degroote@NetBSD.org>.

NetBSD 9.4_STABLE                July 30, 2012               NetBSD 9.4_STABLE