Adding and configuring a network interface card (NIC) is a common task for any FreeBSD administrator.
With the IP address in hand, you can set up your router: Open your Web browser and type your router’s IP address into the address bar. So, for most SMC routers, you type 192.168.2.1 in your browser’s address bar to access the router’s Web page. How to set up a networked hard drive with a Mac. Sharing a storage drive over Wi-Fi is a great way to access all your important files across multiple devices.
First, determine the model of the NIC and the chip it uses. FreeBSD supports a wide variety of NICs. Check the Hardware Compatibility List for the FreeBSD release to see if the NIC is supported.
Use DHCP or a manual IP address on Mac. An Internet Protocol (IP) address is a number that identifies each computer across the internet or a network. When you connect to the internet or an IP network, your computer needs an IP address. Your IP address can be provided in two main ways. Adding, Editing, & Adjusting DNS Server Settings in Mac OS X. Go to the Apple menu and select “System Preferences” Choose the “Network” control panel, select your network interface from the left side (“Wi-Fi” or “Ethernet” for example), then click the “Advanced” button in the lower right corner of the Network window.
If the NIC is supported, determine the name of the FreeBSD driver for the NIC. Refer to /usr/src/sys/conf/NOTES and /usr/src/sys/arch/conf/NOTES for the list of NIC drivers with some information about the supported chipsets. When in doubt, read the manual page of the driver as it will provide more information about the supported hardware and any known limitations of the driver.
The drivers for common NICs are already present in the GENERIC kernel, meaning the NIC should be probed during boot. The system's boot messages can be viewed by typing more /var/run/dmesg.boot and using the spacebar to scroll through the text. In this example, two Ethernet NICs using the dc(4) driver are present on the system:
If the driver for the NIC is not present in GENERIC, but a driver is available, the driver will need to be loaded before the NIC can be configured and used. This may be accomplished in one of two ways:
  • The easiest way is to load a kernel module for the NIC using kldload(8). To also automatically load the driver at boot time, add the appropriate line to /boot/loader.conf. Not all NIC drivers are available as modules.
  • Alternatively, statically compile support for the NIC into a custom kernel. Refer to /usr/src/sys/conf/NOTES, /usr/src/sys/arch/conf/NOTES and the manual page of the driver to determine which line to add to the custom kernel configuration file. For more information about recompiling the kernel, refer to Chapter 8, Configuring the FreeBSD Kernel. If the NIC was detected at boot, the kernel does not need to be recompiled.
Unfortunately, there are still many vendors that do not provide schematics for their drivers to the open source community because they regard such information as trade secrets. Consequently, the developers of FreeBSD and other operating systems are left with two choices: develop the drivers by a long and pain-staking process of reverse engineering or using the existing driver binaries available for Microsoft® Windows® platforms.
FreeBSD provides “native” support for the Network Driver Interface Specification (NDIS). It includes ndisgen(8) which can be used to convert a Windows® XP driver into a format that can be used on FreeBSD. Because the ndis(4) driver uses a Windows® XP binary, it only runs on i386™ and amd64 systems. PCI, CardBus, PCMCIA, and USB devices are supported.
To use ndisgen(8), three things are needed:
  1. FreeBSD kernel sources.
  2. A Windows® XP driver binary with a .SYS extension.
  3. A Windows® XP driver configuration file with a .INF extension.
Download the .SYS and .INF files for the specific NIC. Generally, these can be found on the driver CD or at the vendor's website. The following examples use W32DRIVER.SYS and W32DRIVER.INF.
The driver bit width must match the version of FreeBSD. For FreeBSD/i386, use a Windows® 32-bit driver. For FreeBSD/amd64, a Windows® 64-bit driver is needed.
The next step is to compile the driver binary into a loadable kernel module. As root, use ndisgen(8):
This command is interactive and prompts for any extra information it requires. A new kernel module will be generated in the current directory. Use kldload(8) to load the new module:
In addition to the generated kernel module, the ndis.ko and if_ndis.ko modules must be loaded. This should happen automatically when any module that depends on ndis(4) is loaded. If not, load them manually, using the following commands:
The first command loads the ndis(4) miniport driver wrapper and the second loads the generated NIC driver.
Check dmesg(8) to see if there were any load errors. If all went well, the output should be similar to the following:
From here, ndis0 can be configured like any other NIC.
To configure the system to load the ndis(4) modules at boot time, copy the generated module, W32DRIVER_SYS.ko, to /boot/modules. Then, add the following line to /boot/loader.conf:
Once the right driver is loaded for the NIC, the card needs to be configured. It may have been configured at installation time by bsdinstall(8).
To display the NIC configuration, enter the following command:
In this example, the following devices were displayed:
  • dc0: The first Ethernet interface.
  • dc1: The second Ethernet interface.
  • lo0: The loopback device.
FreeBSD uses the driver name followed by the order in which the card is detected at boot to name the NIC. For example, sis2 is the third NIC on the system using the sis(4) driver.
In this example, dc0 is up and running. The key indicators are:
  1. UP means that the card is configured and ready.
  2. The card has an Internet (inet) address, 192.168.1.3.
  3. It has a valid subnet mask (netmask), where 0xffffff00 is the same as 255.255.255.0.
  4. It has a valid broadcast address, 192.168.1.255.
  5. The MAC address of the card (ether) is 00:a0:cc:da:da:da.
  6. The physical media selection is on autoselection mode (media: Ethernet autoselect (100baseTX <full-duplex>)). In this example, dc1 is configured to run with 10baseT/UTP media. For more information on available media types for a driver, refer to its manual page.
  7. The status of the link (status) is active, indicating that the carrier signal is detected. For dc1, the status: no carrier status is normal when an Ethernet cable is not plugged into the card.
If the ifconfig(8) output had shown something similar to:
it would indicate the card has not been configured.
The card must be configured as root. The NIC configuration can be performed from the command line with ifconfig(8) but will not persist after a reboot unless the configuration is also added to /etc/rc.conf. If a DHCP server is present on the LAN, just add this line:
Replace dc0 with the correct value for the system.
The line added, then, follow the instructions given in Section 11.5.3, “Testing and Troubleshooting”.

Note:

Manual Network Setting In Macbook Pro

If the network was configured during installation, some entries for the NIC(s) may be already present. Double check /etc/rc.conf before adding any lines.

If there is no DHCP server, the NIC(s) must be configured manually. Add a line for each NIC present on the system, as seen in this example:
Replace dc0 and dc1 and the IP address information with the correct values for the system. Refer to the man page for the driver, ifconfig(8), and rc.conf(5) for more details about the allowed options and the syntax of /etc/rc.conf.
If the network is not using DNS, edit /etc/hosts to add the names and IP addresses of the hosts on the LAN, if they are not already there. For more information, refer to hosts(5) and to /usr/share/examples/etc/hosts.

Note:

If there is no DHCP server and access to the Internet is needed, manually configure the default gateway and the nameserver:

Once the necessary changes to /etc/rc.conf are saved, a reboot can be used to test the network configuration and to verify that the system restarts without any configuration errors. Alternatively, apply the settings to the networking system with this command:

Note:

If a default gateway has been set in /etc/rc.conf, also issue this command:

Once the networking system has been relaunched, test the NICs.
To verify that an Ethernet card is configured correctly, ping(8) the interface itself, and then ping(8) another machine on the LAN:
To test network resolution, use the host name instead of the IP address. If there is no DNS server on the network, /etc/hosts must first be configured. To this purpose, edit /etc/hosts to add the names and IP addresses of the hosts on the LAN, if they are not already there. For more information, refer to hosts(5) and to /usr/share/examples/etc/hosts.
When troubleshooting hardware and software configurations, check the simple things first. Is the network cable plugged in? Are the network services properly configured? Is the firewall configured correctly? Is the NIC supported by FreeBSD? Before sending a bug report, always check the Hardware Notes, update the version of FreeBSD to the latest STABLE version, check the mailing list archives, and search the Internet.
Network
If the card works, yet performance is poor, read through tuning(7). Also, check the network configuration as incorrect network settings can cause slow connections.
Some users experience one or two device timeout messages, which is normal for some cards. If they continue, or are bothersome, determine if the device is conflicting with another device. Double check the cable connections. Consider trying another card.
To resolve watchdog timeout errors, first check the network cable. Many cards require a PCI slot which supports bus mastering. On some old motherboards, only one PCI slot allows it, usually slot 0. Check the NIC and the motherboard documentation to determine if that may be the problem.
No route to host messages occur if the system is unable to route a packet to the destination host. This can happen if no default route is specified or if a cable is unplugged. Check the output of netstat -rn and make sure there is a valid route to the host. If there is not, read Section 31.2, “Gateways and Routes”.
ping: sendto: Permission denied error messages are often caused by a misconfigured firewall. If a firewall is enabled on FreeBSD but no rules have been defined, the default policy is to deny all traffic, even ping(8). Refer to Chapter 30, Firewalls for more information.
Sometimes performance of the card is poor or below average. In these cases, try setting the media selection mode from autoselect to the correct media selection. While this works for most hardware, it may or may not resolve the issue. Again, check all the network settings, and refer to tuning(7).

Topics Map > OS and Desktop Applications > Operating Systems > Mac OS X
This document details how to delete/reset network adapters in OS X.
Note: You will need Administrative privileges on the computer to perform this action.
  1. Open System Preferences from within the Apple menu.
  2. Choose the Network option.
  3. Highlight the network adapter that is causing difficulties and press the '-' sign in the bottom of the left hand column.
  4. Click Apply in the bottom right hand corner of the page to apply these changes.
  5. It is strongly recommended that you restart the computer to apply these changes.
  6. After restarting the machine, open the Network panel by repeating Steps 1-2.
  7. If the adapters which you previously removed have not appeared, you will need to press the '+' sign in the bottom of the left hand column.
  8. Choose the interface of the adapter that you deleted prior to restarting your computer and click Create.
  9. After clicking Apply, this adapter should be added and functional once again.

See Also:


Manual Network Setting In Macbook Air

Keywords:mac reset network quick fix 10.6 10.7 10.8 reinstall reset delete deleting wifi wi-fiSuggest keywordsDoc ID:26681
Owner:Jeff W.Group:DoIT Help Desk
Created:2012-10-03 11:31 CSTUpdated:2019-02-24 10:36 CST
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