xref: /freebsd/share/man/man4/rtw89.4 (revision dabf006a638fdc44cdcf69731de8ac83959db731)
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27.Dd November 10, 2024
28.Dt RTW89 4
29.Os
30.Sh NAME
31.Nm rtw89
32.Nd Realtek IEEE 802.11ax wireless network driver
33.Sh SYNOPSIS
34The driver will auto-load without any user interaction using
35.Xr devmatch 8
36if enabled in
37.Xr rc.conf 5 .
38.Pp
39Only if auto-loading is explicitly disabled, place the following
40lines in
41.Xr rc.conf 5
42to manually load the driver as a module at boot time:
43.Bd -literal -offset indent
44kld_list="${kld_list} if_rtw89"
45.Ed
46.Pp
47It is discouraged to load the driver from
48.Xr loader 8 .
49.Sh DESCRIPTION
50The
51.Nm
52driver is derived from Realtek's Linux rtw89 driver.
53.Pp
54This driver requires firmware to be loaded before it will work.
55The package
56.Pa wifi-firmware-rtw89-kmod
57from the
58.Pa ports/net/wifi-firmware-rtw89-kmod
59port needs to be installed before the driver is loaded.
60Otherwise no
61.Xr wlan 4
62interface can be created using
63.Xr ifconfig 8 .
64One should use
65.Xr fwget 8
66to install the correct firmware package.
67.Pp
68The driver uses the
69.\" No LinuxKPI man pages so no .Xr here.
70.Sy linuxkpi_wlan
71and
72.Sy linuxkpi
73compat framework to bridge between the Linux and
74native
75.Fx
76driver code as well as to the native
77.Xr net80211 4
78wireless stack.
79.Sh HARDWARE
80The
81.Nm
82driver supports PCIe devices with the following chipsets:
83.Pp
84.Bl -bullet -offset indent -compact
85.It
86Realtek 8851BE Wi-Fi 6  (RTL8851BE)
87.It
88Realtek 8852AE Wi-Fi 6  (RTL8852AE)
89.It
90Realtek 8852BE Wi-Fi 6  (RTL8852BE)
91.It
92Realtek 8852CE Wi-Fi 6E (RTL8852CE)
93.It
94Realtek 8922AE Wi-Fi 7  (RTL8922AE)
95.El
96.Sh LOADER TUNABLES
97.Bl -tag -width indent
98.It Va compat.linuxkpi.skb.mem_limit
99If you are running a 64bit system with more than 4GB of main memory
100you need to set this tunable to
101.Sy 1
102in
103.Xr loader.conf 5
104and reboot once to make it effective.
105This tunable will work around a problem with DMA and limit allocations
106for network buffer memory to the lower 32bit of physical memory and
107make the driver work.
108.El
109.Sh SEE ALSO
110.Xr wlan 4 ,
111.Xr networking 7 ,
112.Xr fwget 8 ,
113.Xr ifconfig 8 ,
114.Xr wpa_supplicant 8
115.Sh HISTORY
116The
117.Nm
118driver first appeared in
119.Fx 14.2 .
120.Sh BUGS
121Certainly.
122.Pp
123Does not seem to work (reliably) on machines with more than 4GB of
124main memory.
125See in the
126.Sx LOADER TUNABLES
127section above.
128.Pp
129While
130.Nm
131supports 802.11a/b/g/n/ac/ax modes,
132the compatibility code currently only supports 802.11a/b/g modes.
133Support for 802.11n/ac/ax is yet to come.
134