#wifibox — Public Fediverse posts

Anyone here has experience doing a "Wi-Fi box" in NetBSD? I wonder how big is the overhead. Both in user effort and computer resources.

When I was younger I used to run a *very slow* virtual machine with Windows XP while daily-driving Linux. So I could interact with government webpages, banks, University software, etc. Anything that I couldn't do in Linux was done in this winXP VM.

Now I'm getting close to do something similar. A light VM with linux to do anything that I can't in NetBSD.

I still don't truly daily-drive NetBSD: I'm writing this tooth from my Linux Mint laptop, for example. To use the Wi-Fi from this machine, I still need a Linux driver, but I'm starting to pet the idea of a small VM + PCI passthrough to setup Wi-Fi, and use that VM as a router.

Something tells me that battery life will be even shorter than it is now. But it would be better to hear that from people who have actually done something like that.

#wifi #wifibox #NetBSD #runbsd

my WiFi performance after using WiFiBox. almost double from initial speed. I hope FreeBSD stabilizes the driver as soon as possible.

#freebsd #wifibox

Very interesting article about the creation of #wifibox on #FreeBSD https://freebsdfoundation.org/our-work/journal/browser-based-edition/virtualization-2/

#freebsdjournal

A lot of times I used i3status+i3bar to display info on i3 main panel. BUT, when I started using #wifibox on my #FreeBSD laptop, I found that i3status can't display info about WiFi, because WiFi network interface is inside #bhyve Linux VM

So, I switched to i3blocks. Now, with a little script, I can see all necessary info from wpa_cli and much more. i3 main panel becomes clickable! So now clicking on datetime opens calendar in Emacs, click on WiFi info opens wpa_gui and so on

#i3 #i3wm #freebsd

Trying out #wifibox on #freebsd it works fantastically except when I reboot I have to restart the guest and run dhclient manually. Has anybody ever encountered and solved this?

@petlib JFTR, anything that works with #GhostBSD can also be made working with (vanilla) #FreeBSD. Of course, when just starting, it makes sense to use something working on your specific hardware OOTB. The *real* issue here is still, once again, #wifi. Hacks like #wifibox shouldn't be necessary 😞

@darth @WagesOf Some people use the improved #WiFi support provided by the #wifibox project with great success: https://github.com/pgj/freebsd-wifibox

The idea is that you run a #Linux VM and let the Linux drivers operate your wireless card.

It's a pretty cool solution in my opinion.

@woodrat @lobocode Yeah, the #wifibox is a pretty cool use of #virtualization.

@herrbischoff I understand the use of #Freebsd as a server is their priority, not desktop/laptop, but I'm sure it would be a success with better #wifi management (and suspend maybe, I don't know the state of it nowadays). #TrueOS was gathering a lot of audience until they drop the desktop environment, which mean a lot of people are interested in this concept.

edit: that said, I've yet to test #wifibox. Can you tell us more about your experience with it ?

@Tionisla For me #wifibox is a great fallback on #FreeBSD. It is very easy to set up and I quickly forget that I am not using a native driver.

#wifibox is a great idea and a great implementation IMHO...

@herrbischoff @thindil

I recently discovered #wifibox (net/wifibox).

This #FreeBSD package starts a Linux virtual machine with PCI pass-through for a Wi-Fi device and act as a router between the host system and the network.

As a user of a laptop with a built-in Wi-Fi adapter not supported by FreeBSD but supported by Linux, this allows me to have working Wi-Fi without the need for my old crappy USB Wi-Fi dongle.

My current network config for wifibox, bastille and iocage is a total mess. Some cleanup is needed!