On 2024-09-20 14:42, Bryan Vyhmeister wrote:
On Thu, Sep 19, 2024 at 06:18:25PM -0400, J Doe wrote:
Hi list,
I see in the FAQ that the Apple Mac Mini M2 is a supported platform[0]
and that the WiFi is supported via: bwfmv(4). I had two questions about
WiFi support:
1. Is Host AP mode supported on the Mac Mini M2? The man pages appear
to imply that this is supported, but I wanted to double-check.
I am running OpenBSD an a Mac mini M2 Pro. It serves as my OpenBSD
desktop and arm64 test system. The WiFI chip on mine is not supported at
all although some work was done in the past but has run into some
issues. The bwfm(4) man page lists many other revisions but the BCM4387
is the last one of the list. The M2 Pro Mac mini has the BCM4388. I
asked about this support myself here:
https://marc.info/?l=openbsd-tech&m=172107926804965&w=2
I am not positive that the regular M2 uses the same WiFi chipset as the
M2 Pro but I suspect it does.
As Stuart also responded, I would use an external AP rather than trying
to do hostap. There are a fair amount of good options out there these
days that will be faster and more reliable for you. If you are trying to
avoid some vendor firmware, you could potentially run OpenWRT on an
older UniFi AP or something like that which works pretty well and is
something I have tested also.
2. Does: bwfmv(4) also support the 10 Gigabit mode that is available as
an option for the Mac Mini M2 ?[1] I am aware that OpenBSD may not
support full bandwidth at 10 Gbps, but would it support a bandwidth
higher than 1 Gbps if the 10Gbps option is selected when purchasing a Mini ?
As for the aq(4) 10Gbps ethernet port, it should work but there might be
some quirks. There was a long thread about Mac Studio support a while
back where some of these things were worked out but I can't locate it at
the moment.
Here is a Mac mini M2 report though without aq(4) on the Mac mini M2.
https://marc.info/?l=openbsd-arm&m=171760575012201&w=2
I have a Mac mini M1 with aq(4) 10Gbps ethernet but have not had a
chance to test OpenBSD on it since it is in use for video production. I
will see if I can get to that at some point.
The apldrm(4) support works pretty well but is kind of slow with
dragging windows around and so forth. The screen redraw is slow during
that operation although I'm testing on a 5120x2160 monitor at 30 Hz
which might make it worse. It is not like having a nice inteldrm(4)
supported graphics card but the Apple Silicon platforms work remarkably
well considering how difficult modern Apple hardware can be.
Bryan
Hi Bryan and Stuart,
Thank you for your answers to my questions!
In terms of other M2 Mac's, does anyone know if the Macbook Air M2 13"
uses a supported WiFi chipset ?
Some sources online[0] suggest that the chipset is: BCM4387. Based on
the OpenBSD FAQ and: man bwfm this is a supported chipset, but I was
wondering if anyone had any real world experience with it ?
Related to this .. I noticed the following at the bottom of man:
"The firmware is outdated and contains known vulnerabilities."
Does that apply for newer chipsets like the BCM4387 ?
Thanks again,
- J
Links
[0]
https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/apple-says-latest-13-inch-macbook-air-now-supports-bluetooth-5-3.2394941/post-32295112
