NAME
malo
—
Marvell Libertas IEEE 802.11b/g
wireless network device
SYNOPSIS
malo* at cardbus?
malo* at pci?
malo* at pcmcia?
DESCRIPTION
The malo
driver provides support for
Marvell Libertas 88W8335/88W8310/88W8385 based PCI/CardBus/PCMCIA 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
hostname.if(5).
FILES
The driver needs a set of firmware files which are loaded when an interface is brought up:
- /etc/firmware/malo8335-h
- /etc/firmware/malo8335-m
- /etc/firmware/malo8338
- /etc/firmware/malo8385-h
- /etc/firmware/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://firmware.openbsd.org/firmware/malo-firmware-1.4.tgz
HARDWARE
The following cards are among those supported by the
malo
driver:
Card | Chip | Bus | Standard |
Ambicom WL54CF | 88W8385 | PCMCIA | b/g |
I-O DATA WN-G54/CF | 88W8385 | PCMCIA | b/g |
Netgear WG511v2 | 88W8310 | CardBus | b/g |
Netgear WG311v3 | 88W8335 | PCI | b/g |
SparkLAN WCFM-100 | 88W8385 | PCMCIA | b/g |
Tenda TWL541C | 88W8310 | CardBus | b/g |
Tenda TWL542P | 88W8335 | PCI | b/g |
EXAMPLES
The following hostname.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
Configure malo0 to join network “my_net” using WPA with passphrase “my_passphrase”:
# ifconfig malo0 nwid my_net wpakey my_passphrase
Join an existing BSS network, “my_net”:
# ifconfig malo0 192.168.1.1 netmask 0xffffff00 nwid my_net
SEE ALSO
arp(4), cardbus(4), ifmedia(4), intro(4), netintro(4), pci(4), hostname.if(5), hostapd(8), ifconfig(8)
HISTORY
The malo
driver first appeared in
OpenBSD 4.1.
AUTHORS
The malo
driver was written by
Claudio Jeker and Marcus
Glocker.
CAVEATS
WPA encryption is not supported for PCMCIA devices.