xref: /freebsd/share/man/man4/rtw89.4 (revision acd546f01e58354af049455472980c6c4a52e18b)
1.\"-
2.\" SPDX-License-Identifier: BSD-2-Clause
3.\"
4.\" Copyright (c) 2023-2025 Bjoern A. Zeeb
5.\"
6.Dd June 13, 2025
7.Dt RTW89 4
8.Os
9.Sh NAME
10.Nm rtw89
11.Nd Realtek IEEE 802.11ax wireless network driver
12.Sh SYNOPSIS
13The driver will auto-load without any user interaction using
14.Xr devmatch 8
15if enabled in
16.Xr rc.conf 5 .
17.Pp
18Only if auto-loading is explicitly disabled, place the following
19lines in
20.Xr rc.conf 5
21to manually load the driver as a module at boot time:
22.Bd -literal -offset indent
23kld_list="${kld_list} if_rtw89"
24.Ed
25.Pp
26It is not possible to load the driver from
27.Xr loader 8 .
28.Sh DESCRIPTION
29The
30.Nm
31driver is derived from Realtek's Linux rtw89 driver.
32.Pp
33This driver requires firmware to be loaded before it will work.
34The package
35.Pa wifi-firmware-rtw89-kmod
36from the
37.Pa ports/net/wifi-firmware-rtw89-kmod
38port needs to be installed before the driver is loaded.
39Otherwise no
40.Xr wlan 4
41interface can be created using
42.Xr ifconfig 8 .
43One should use
44.Xr fwget 8
45to install the correct firmware package.
46.Pp
47The driver uses the
48.\" No LinuxKPI man pages so no .Xr here.
49.Sy linuxkpi_wlan
50and
51.Sy linuxkpi
52compat framework to bridge between the Linux and
53native
54.Fx
55driver code as well as to the native
56.Xr net80211 4
57wireless stack.
58.Sh HARDWARE
59The
60.Nm
61driver supports PCIe devices with the following chipsets:
62.Pp
63.Bl -bullet -offset indent -compact
64.It
65Realtek 8851BE Wi-Fi 6  (RTL8851BE)
66.It
67Realtek 8852AE Wi-Fi 6  (RTL8852AE)
68.It
69Realtek 8852BE Wi-Fi 6  (RTL8852BE)
70.It
71Realtek 8852CE Wi-Fi 6E (RTL8852CE)
72.It
73Realtek 8922AE Wi-Fi 7  (RTL8922AE)
74.El
75.Sh LOADER TUNABLES
76.Bl -tag -width indent
77.It Va compat.linuxkpi.skb.mem_limit
78If you are running a 64bit system with more than 4GB of main memory
79you need to set this tunable to
80.Sy 1
81in
82.Xr loader.conf 5
83and reboot once to make it effective.
84This tunable will work around a problem with DMA and limit allocations
85for network buffer memory to the lower 32bit of physical memory and
86make the driver work.
87.El
88.Sh SEE ALSO
89.Xr wlan 4 ,
90.Xr networking 7 ,
91.Xr fwget 8 ,
92.Xr ifconfig 8 ,
93.Xr wpa_supplicant 8
94.Sh HISTORY
95The
96.Nm
97driver first appeared in
98.Fx 14.2 .
99.Sh BUGS
100Certainly.
101.Pp
102Does not seem to work (reliably) on machines with more than 4GB of
103main memory.
104See in the
105.Sx LOADER TUNABLES
106section above.
107.Pp
108While
109.Nm
110supports 802.11a/b/g/n/ac/ax modes,
111the compatibility code currently only supports 802.11a/b/g modes.
112Support for 802.11n/ac/ax is yet to come.
113