Intel WiFi inoperative

EdElliott-7

I'm not sure if anyone else has had problems with Intel WiFi cards but with either an AX210 on the 14.p2 branch or the 9260 on the 15.0p2 versions of GhostBSD they are unrecognized after the first reboot. With the 14.p2 branch the driver was apparently not correct. I found the answer here: https://www.freshports.org/net/wifi-firmware-iwlwifi-kmod/. -Download the correct driver after identifying it with fwget.
With the current download of 15.0p2 I had an Intel 9260 which was fine until I rebooted and blammo, not recognized. Fwget said the correct driver was already installed. I found the answer here: https://freebsd.uw.cz/2025/06/freebsd-143-laptop-computer-with-intel.html
It was too easy! change the "ifconfig_wlan0="WPA DHCP"" in rc.conf to:
" devmatch_blocklist="if_iwm"
wlans_iwlwifi0="wlan0"
ifconfig_wlan0="WPA DHCP"
I'm sure some of you are saying this is old hat but it was all new to me.
Thanks.

NitroNils

EdElliott-7

Wifi worked before upgrade to FreeBSD 15 base.
Your solution renders this error:

# service netif start wlan0 ifconfig: SIOCIFCREATE2 (wlan0): Device not configured Starting wpa_supplicant. /etc/rc.d/wpa_supplicant: WARNING: failed to start wpa_supplicant Starting Network: wlan0. ifconfig: interface wlan0 does not exist

Also: Seems to be a typo in your text:

" devmatch_blocklist="if_iwm"

The first two characters are superflous, no?
Happy to create a new issue if this is better.

EDIT:
Found a suggestion on the Telegram help channel:
Eric said:
could it be that GhostBSD-firmware-iwm is missing?
Indeed it was not installed. Same as GhostBSD-mandoc was.

me12345

I was able to replicate the same speeds as in your second link with the latest R15 based GhostBSD. Hopefully 15.1 FreeBSD will have ac working at speeds ( about 400 Mbps data transfer) similar to Linux and Windows drivers for Intel 9XXX Wifi chipsets. Right now stuck at Wifi 3 (Wifi n) maxing out at 20Mbps

me12345

I'm seeing around 60Mps actual speed now with FreeBSD 15.1 PRERELEASE on Intel 3160 AC Wifi chipset. I also confirmed Wifi 5 VHT on 5Ghz band is working so that is great, but not sure why but Linux gets around 400Mps. So hopefully there are some FreeBSD improvements coming for 15.1 final in June.

Takashi

Thanks for this thread — it pointed me in the right direction. I had a similar experience but with some additional twists that might help others.

My setup

Intel Wireless 8265 / 8275
Upgraded from a working 14.x installation (using iwm driver)

The confusing symptom: only SSH dies

After the update, my symptoms were:

ping → worked fine
Web browsing → worked fine
SSH → silently hung, no error message

This was very confusing. The reason turns out to be that without proper firmware, the WiFi chip cannot handle large packets. SSH key exchange requires large packets and silently fails, while ping (small packets) and web browsing (TCP auto-adjusts packet size) appear to work normally.

The fix was the same as yours — running fwget installed the missing wifi-firmware-iwlwifi-kmod base package. Interestingly, all the variant packages (7000, 8000, 9000, 22000, ax210, bz, sc) were already installed; only the base package for older chips was missing.

An extra trap: legacy loader.conf causes kernel panic

While troubleshooting, I tried adding if_iwlwifi_load="YES" to /boot/loader.conf, which is suggested in older documentation and forum posts.

Don't do this. iwlwifi is now loaded automatically via devmatch(8) and must not be listed in loader.conf. Having this line causes a kernel panic due to double-loading.

Why this happened

This update involved two simultaneous changes:

iwm → iwlwifi driver migration
src → ports firmware migration (WiFi firmware was removed from the FreeBSD src tree and is now managed separately via fwget)

Long-term users who had iwm-related entries in loader.conf or rc.conf from older setups are particularly likely to hit this combination of issues.

The real danger: WiFi-only systems

The correct order is:

1. Run fwget first
2. Then update via Software Station
3. Reboot

If you reboot after a kernel update before running fwget, WiFi stops working. Without WiFi and no wired LAN fallback, recovery becomes very difficult.

It would be great if Software Station could run fwget automatically before rebooting after a kernel update.

Hope this helps someone!