2023Q3 status report for Wifibox

website/content/en/status/report-2023-07-2023-09/wifibox.adoc

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+== Wifibox: Use Linux to drive your wireless card on FreeBSD
+
+Links: +
+link:https://github.com/pgj/freebsd-wifibox[Project GitHub Page] +
+link:https://cgit.freebsd.org/ports/tree/net/wifibox[``net/wifibox`` port]
+
+Contact: PÁLI Gábor János <pali.gabor@gmail.com>
+
+Wifibox is an experimental project for exploring the ways of deploying
+a virtualized Linux guest to drive wireless networking cards on the
+FreeBSD host system.  There have been guides to describe how to set
+this up manually, and Wifibox aims to implement those ideas as a
+single easy-to-use software package.
+
+- It uses ``bhyve(8)`` to run the embedded Linux system.  This helps
+  to achieve low resource footprint.  It requires an x64 CPU with I/O
+  MMU (AMD-Vi, Intel VT-d), ~150 MB physical memory, and some disk
+  space available for the guest virtual disk image, which can be even
+  ~30 MB only in certain cases.  It works with FreeBSD 12 and later,
+  some cards may require FreeBSD 13 though.
+
+- The guest is constructed using https://alpinelinux.org/[Alpine
+  Linux], a security-oriented, lightweight distribution based on
+  https://www.musl-libc.org/[musl libc] and
+  https://busybox.net/[BusyBox], with some custom extensions and
+  patches imported from https://archlinux.org/[Arch Linux] most
+  notably.  It is shipped with a number of diagnostic tools for better
+  management of the hardware in use.  The recent version features
+  Linux 6.1, but Linux 6.5 is also available as an alternative.
+
+- Configuration files are shared with the host system. The guest uses
+  ``wpa_supplicant(8)`` or ``hostapd(8)`` (depending on the
+  configuration) so it is possible to import the host's
+  ``wpa_supplicant.conf(5)`` or ``hostapd.conf(5)`` file without any
+  changes.
+
+- When configured, ``wpa_supplicant(8)`` and ``hostapd(8)`` control
+  sockets could be exposed by the guest, which enables use of related
+  utilities directly from the host, such as ``wpa_cli(8)`` or
+  ``wpa_gui(8)`` from the ``net/wpa_supplicant_gui`` package, or
+  ``hostapd_cli(8)``.
+
+- Everything is shipped in a single package that can be easily
+  installed and removed.  This comes with an ``rc(8)`` system service
+  that automatically launches the guest on boot and stops it on
+  shutdown.
+
+- It can be configured to forward IPv6 traffic, which is currently an
+  experimental option but turned on by default.
+
+Wifibox has been mainly tested with Intel chipsets, and it has shown
+great performance and stability.  Therefore it might serve as an
+interim solution until the Intel Wireless support becomes mature
+enough.  It was confirmed that Wifibox works with Atheros, Realtek,
+and Mediatek chipsets too, and feedback is more than welcome about
+others.  Broadcom chips (that are often found in MacBook Pros) can
+also work, but there are known stability issues.