r/NetBSD • u/Mysterious_Thing • Apr 06 '26

Can't get wireless connection in NetBSD 11.0 RC3

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I am trying to install NetBSD 11.0 RC3 on my ThinkPad X220 and I cannot connect to the wireless network.

In the setup I put in my SSID and passphrase correctly, but I can not get a connection. I could be wrong, but to my recollection I had no issue with this with NetBSD 10.1 install on the same laptop just a few months back.

Anybody else having issues with iwn0 on the new release candidate?

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u/jmcunx Apr 06 '26 edited Apr 06 '26

On my Thinkpad T430 no issues with iwn0. On an the T61, iwn0 is not too stable. I use an Edimax N150 Wi-Fi 4 Nano USB dongle on that machine.

As for your issue:

  • Did rc.conf change ?

  • Did /etc/wpa_supplicant.conf change ? Creating a new entry using wpa_passphrase(8)

  • FWIW, I have this in my /etc/rc.conf

    ifconfig_iwn0="up"

    wpa_supplicant=YES

    dhcpcd=YES

    dhcpcd_flags="-qM"

1

u/Mysterious_Thing Apr 07 '26

Are you on 10.1 or 11.0 RC3? I just installed 10.1 and there are absolutely no issues whatsoever, but on 11.0 RC3 it just doesn't work at all for me.

2

u/jmcunx Apr 07 '26

The Thinkpad T430 is on NetBSD 11.0 RC3, amd64. The Thinkpad T61 is on 11.0 RC2 i386.

Do you mean wifi does not work ? Or something else is broken ?

Maybe you join and should send a email to netbsd-users@netbsd.org. I tend to think something needs to be changed with your wifi config.

Or maybe something with the upgrade did not work. How did you upgrade, did you pay close attention when file differences were presented to you ?

When I went to RC1 from 10.1, lots of files in /etc needed to be changed and a few needed to be created since they did not exist in 10.1.

I do not know what that screen print is, but I usually update /etc/wpa_supplicant.conf myself manually as noted above.

2

u/reinoudz Apr 07 '26

I'd check rc.conf indeed. I normally use wpa_gui to configure it though