if_wpi will not work for me

[Benjamin Close]

Yousif Hassan wrote:
> Torfinn Ingolfsen <torfinn.ingolfsen at broadpark.no> wrote:
>> Johan Johansen <Johan.Johansen at cc.uit.no> wrote:
>>
>>> Returning from my vacation, I notice that my problem is somewhat
>>> different from what some of you other guys describe. I cant get a
>>> wpi-device to work with at all.
>>>
>>> Booting without acpi makes no differens.
>>> Applying patch wpi_releng7.diff makes no differens.
>>>
>>> Before I load if_wpi, pciconf says
>>> none0 at pci0:8:0:0:       class=0x028000 card=0x135c103c
>>> chip=0x42228086 rev=0x02 hdr=0x00
>>>     vendor     = 'Intel Corporation'
>>>     device     = '10418086 Intel 3945ABG Wireless LAN controller'
>>>     class      = network
>>> and after
>>> wpi0 at pci0:8:0:0:        class=0x028000 card=0x135c103c
>>> chip=0x42228086 rev=0x02 hdr=0x00
>>>     vendor     = 'Intel Corporation'
>>>     device     = '10418086 Intel 3945ABG Wireless LAN controller'
>>>     class      = network
>>> but still no wpi0 present.
>>>
>>> So, would it help to buy more memory, and if I do, where should I put
>>> it?
>>
>> Just curious: why do you think that buying more memory will help?
>> Because of the "cabn't allocate memory resource" message?
>> AFAIU, that message indicates that there is something wrong with the
>> way your acpi / bios tells FreeBSD what memory / how much memory it
>> needs, not that the machine itself has too little memory.
>
> To wit, my experience has been that this message is innocuous.  This 
> has been confirmed by Ben, who wrote the driver.  I used to get these 
> messages but the wpi0 device would attach fine (it tends to get buried 
> during bootup messages after all that scroll - check dmesg).  In 
> addition, Andrew's latest patches to -current and -stable resolve this 
> message - it no longer appears for me.  So Johan, do not buy more 
> memory simply to solve this issue!
>
> Did you try those latest patches, and do you still see a problem?
>
> If your pciconf is reporting a "wpi0 at ...." in the device list, it 
> seems improbable that the device didn't attach - in that case you'd 
> have seen "noneX at ..."  This may be stating the obvious, but there are 
> specific steps you need to do to enable this device, including 
> accepting a license via /boot/loader.conf; did you follow them?  Do 
> you have a dmesg confirming that the device did not attach?  Do you 
> have the output of ifconfig for us to look at?
I believe there is two issues here. The innocent message is:

//        wpi0: bus_dmamem_alloc failed to align memory properly.

//This is handled by the driver and the driver version now in 
-Current/RELENG_7 has a proper fix preventing this from occurring.

However, //

//        wpi0: could not allocate memory resource
        device_attach: wpi0 attach returned 6

Is caused by pci memory not being available. This seems to be occurring 
on pci-pci bridges on some laptops and will render you without a wpi 
device showing up.
At present the cause is unknown but I'm working to try and fix it. It's 
not actually driver related but pci bus related.

Also, adding more memory won't help fix the problem.

Cheers,
Benjamin