Working around unsupported Ethernet card with PXE or UEFI?

[Dave Cottlehuber]

On Fri, 21 Jun 2019, at 04:33, Thomas Mueller wrote:
> Is it possible to build and install FreeBSD so as to be bootable and access the internet with an Ethernet card that doesn't work in FreeBSD?
> 
> Could Ethernet support be obtained through UEFI?
> 
> Or could FreeBSD be installed on another computer or on a NAS NFS share? NAS would probably not have TFTP but would have NFS and iSCSI capability.
> 
> Motherboard has PXE capability. Server OS for FreeBSD installation on other computer could be NetBSD, where the Ethernet (Realtek 8111E or 8168, re(4) driver) works well.
> 
> 
> Tom
Hi Tom
https://www.freebsd.org/doc/en_US.ISO8859-1/books/handbook/config-network-setup.html

NDIS may do what you want but it may suck.

In terms of time vs effort a 15$ USB Ethernet dongle is going to be your best result. If this is a server consider getting a 2nd hand intel NIC. I can get a 4 port pci intel Gb for under 100$ years which is more than sufficient. Lower spec cards will be even cheaper.

There are references on the forums and mailing lists with ones that work for both USB and iNICs.

Dave