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 (WPA1 and WPA2).
WPA2 is the current encryption standard for wireless networks. It is
strongly recommended that neither WEP nor WPA1 are used as the sole
mechanism to secure wireless communication, due to serious weaknesses. WPA1
is disabled by default and may be enabled using the option
"wpaprotos
wpa1,wpa2". For standard WPA networks which use
pre-shared keys (PSK), keys are configured using the
"wpakey
" option. WPA-Enterprise networks
require use of the wpa_supplicant package. 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 can be installed using fw_update(1).
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 example scans for available networks:
# ifconfig malo0 scan
The following hostname.if(5) example configures malo0 to join network “mynwid”, using WPA key “mywpakey”, obtaining an IP address using DHCP:
nwid mynwid wpakey mywpakey dhcp
SEE ALSO
arp(4), cardbus(4), ifmedia(4), intro(4), netintro(4), pci(4), hostname.if(5), 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.
This driver does not support powersave mode.