MALO(4)

💅 MALO(4) — the Marvell Libertas wireless driver, explained by your bestie

okay so real talk, this page is malo(4) from the Kernel Interfaces Manual — it's the manual for the malo driver, aka the thing that makes your crusty-old Marvell wireless card actually do wifi. let's get into it 🦋

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✨ NAME ✨

malo — the Marvell Libertas IEEE 802.11b/g wireless network driver. yes bestie, 802.11b/g, we're talking vintage wifi energy, and honestly? iconic. 👑

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🌸 SYNOPSIS 🌸

so there's two ways to get this driver living in your system, and it's giving "pick your fighter."

Option 1 — bake it into the kernel. drop these lines into your kernel configuration file:

device malo
device pci
device wlan
device firmware

Option 2 — load it as a module at boot. put this line in loader.conf(5):

if_malo_load="YES"

either way you're slaying, just differently 💜

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🎀 DESCRIPTION 🎀

the malo driver provides support for Marvell Libertas 88W8335 based PCI and Cardbus network adapters. it's the whole support system for those cards, no cap.

• it supports station and monitor mode operation 🫶
• only one virtual interface may be configured at any time — so no, you cannot have two, the driver said what it said 💀
• for more info on configuring this device, go see ifconfig(8)

⚠️ important warning, and I mean it: this driver requires firmware to be loaded before it will work. like, literally won't function. the ports/net/malo-firmware-kmod port needs to be installed before ifconfig(8) will work. don't skip this step, I'm begging 🙈

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🦋 HARDWARE 🦋

these are among the cards the malo driver supports — look for your fave:

• Netgear WG311v3 — chip 88W8335, bus PCI, standard b/g
• Tenda TWL542P — chip 88W8335, bus PCI, standard b/g
• U-Khan UW-2054i — chip 88W8335, bus PCI, standard b/g

(all of them are 88W8335 on PCI running b/g, the driver really said "consistency" ✨)

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🌈 EXAMPLES 🌈

these are the moment, fr fr. copy these exactly, don't freelance:

join an existing BSS network (i.e., connect to an access point):

ifconfig wlan create wlandev malo0 inet 192.168.0.20 \
    netmask 0xffffff00

join a specific BSS network with network name “my_net”:

ifconfig wlan create wlandev malo0 ssid my_net up

join a specific BSS network with 64-bit WEP encryption:

ifconfig wlan create wlandev malo0 ssid my_net \
        wepmode on wepkey 0x1234567890 weptxkey 1 up

💀 lowkey yes WEP is ancient and you should side-eye it, but the page gives it as an example so here it is, respectfully.

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👑 SEE ALSO 👑

go read these, they're the supporting cast:

cardbus(4), pci(4), wlan(4), wlan_ccmp(4), wlan_tkip(4), wlan_wep(4), ifconfig(8), wpa_supplicant(8)

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⭐ HISTORY ⭐

the malo device driver first appeared in FreeBSD 7.1. a legacy. a pioneer. we respect her 🎀

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and that's the whole page bestie, every flag, every card, every example, nothing skipped 💖

sign-off moment: this page is from Debian, dated June 24, 2015 — so yeah she's been around a minute, but she still ate. mwah 💋🌸