pass back the desired buffer length. This fixes scanning with the Marvell
88W8335 and BCM4328 wireless cards.
PR: kern/118370
Submitted by: Weongyo Jeong
Tested by: Ed Schouten
to kproc_xxx as they actually make whole processes.
Thos makes way for us to add REAL kthread_create() and friends
that actually make theads. it turns out that most of these
calls actually end up being moved back to the thread version
when it's added. but we need to make this cosmetic change first.
I'd LOVE to do this rename in 7.0 so that we can eventually MFC the
new kthread_xxx() calls.
- make NDIS_DEBUG a sysctl
- default to IEEE80211_MODE_11B if the card doesnt tell us the channels
- dont mess with ic_des_chan when we assosciate
- Allow a directed scan by setting the ESSID before scanning (verified
with wireshark). Hidden APs probably wouldnt have worked before.
- Grab the channel type and use it to look up the correct curchan for
the scan results (mistakenly used 11B before)
- Fix memory leak in the ndis_scan_results
Tested by: matteo
Reviewed by: sam
Approved by: re (rwatson)
- use net80211 for scanning and pass the results back to the scan cache
- use ieee80211_init_channels to fill our channel list
- fix up state transitions
- depreciate the old wicontrol ioctls
- add some debugging lines (#define NDIS_DEBUG)
Reviewed by: sam
Approved by: re (kensmith)
o major overhaul of the way channels are handled: channels are now
fully enumerated and uniquely identify the operating characteristics;
these changes are visible to user applications which require changes
o make scanning support independent of the state machine to enable
background scanning and roaming
o move scanning support into loadable modules based on the operating
mode to enable different policies and reduce the memory footprint
on systems w/ constrained resources
o add background scanning in station mode (no support for adhoc/ibss
mode yet)
o significantly speedup sta mode scanning with a variety of techniques
o add roaming support when background scanning is supported; for now
we use a simple algorithm to trigger a roam: we threshold the rssi
and tx rate, if either drops too low we try to roam to a new ap
o add tx fragmentation support
o add first cut at 802.11n support: this code works with forthcoming
drivers but is incomplete; it's included now to establish a baseline
for other drivers to be developed and for user applications
o adjust max_linkhdr et. al. to reflect 802.11 requirements; this eliminates
prepending mbufs for traffic generated locally
o add support for Atheros protocol extensions; mainly the fast frames
encapsulation (note this can be used with any card that can tx+rx
large frames correctly)
o add sta support for ap's that beacon both WPA1+2 support
o change all data types from bsd-style to posix-style
o propagate noise floor data from drivers to net80211 and on to user apps
o correct various issues in the sta mode state machine related to handling
authentication and association failures
o enable the addition of sta mode power save support for drivers that need
net80211 support (not in this commit)
o remove old WI compatibility ioctls (wicontrol is officially dead)
o change the data structures returned for get sta info and get scan
results so future additions will not break user apps
o fixed tx rate is now maintained internally as an ieee rate and not an
index into the rate set; this needs to be extended to deal with
multi-mode operation
o add extended channel specifications to radiotap to enable 11n sniffing
Drivers:
o ath: add support for bg scanning, tx fragmentation, fast frames,
dynamic turbo (lightly tested), 11n (sniffing only and needs
new hal)
o awi: compile tested only
o ndis: lightly tested
o ipw: lightly tested
o iwi: add support for bg scanning (well tested but may have some
rough edges)
o ral, ural, rum: add suppoort for bg scanning, calibrate rssi data
o wi: lightly tested
This work is based on contributions by Atheros, kmacy, sephe, thompsa,
mlaier, kevlo, and others. Much of the scanning work was supported by
Atheros. The 11n work was supported by Marvell.
specific privilege names to a broad range of privileges. These may
require some future tweaking.
Sponsored by: nCircle Network Security, Inc.
Obtained from: TrustedBSD Project
Discussed on: arch@
Reviewed (at least in part) by: mlaier, jmg, pjd, bde, ceri,
Alex Lyashkov <umka at sevcity dot net>,
Skip Ford <skip dot ford at verizon dot net>,
Antoine Brodin <antoine dot brodin at laposte dot net>
in order to query the underlying Windows driver for the station address
and some other properties. There is a slim chance that the card may
receive a packet and indicate it up to us before ndis_attach() can call
ndis_halt_nic(). This is bad, because both the softc structure and
the ifnet structure aren't fully initialized yet: many pointers are
still NULL, so if we make it into ndis_rxeof(), we will panic.
To fix this, we need to do the following:
- Move the calls to IoAllocateWorkItem() to before the call to ndis_init_nic().
- Move the initialization of the RX DPC and status callback function pointers
to before ndis_init_nic() as well.
- Modify ndis_rxeof() to check if the IFF_DRV_RUNNING flag is set. If it
isn't, we return any supplied NDIS_PACKETs to the NIC without processing
them.
This fixes a crash than can occur when activating a wireless NIC in
close proximity to a very busy wireless network, reported by Ryan
Beasley (ryan%^$!ATgoddamnbastard-****!!!DOTorg.
MFC after: 3 days
Intel's web site requires some minor tweaks to get it to work:
- The driver seems to have been released with full WMI tracing enabled,
and makes references to some WMI APIs, namely IoWMIRegistrationControl(),
WmiQueryTraceInformation() and WmiTraceMessage(). Only the first
one is ever called (during intialization). These have been implemented
as do-nothing stubs for now. Also added a definition for STATUS_NOT_FOUND
to ntoskrnl_var.h, which is used as a return code for one of the WMI
routines.
- The driver references KeRaiseIrqlToDpcLevel() and KeLowerIrql()
(the latter as a function, which is unusual because normally
KeLowerIrql() is a macro in the Windows DDK that calls KfLowewIrql()).
I'm not sure why these are being called since they're not really
part of WDM. Presumeably they're being used for backwards
compatibility with old versions of Windows. These have been
implemented in subr_hal.c. (Note that they're _stdcall routines
instead of _fastcall.)
- When querying the OID_802_11_BSSID_LIST OID to get a BSSID list,
you don't know ahead of time how many networks the NIC has found
during scanning, so you're allowed to pass 0 as the list length.
This should cause the driver to return an 'insufficient resources'
error and set the length to indicate how many bytes are actually
needed. However for some reason, the Intel driver does not honor
this convention: if you give it a length of 0, it returns some
other error and doesn't tell you how much space is really needed.
To get around this, if using a length of 0 yields anything besides
the expected error case, we arbitrarily assume a length of 64K.
This is similar to the hack that wpa_supplicant uses when doing
a BSSID list query.
for code to start out on one CPU when thunking into Windows
mode in ctxsw_utow(), and then be pre-empted and migrated to another
CPU before thunking back to UNIX mode in ctxsw_wtou(). This is
bad, because then we can end up looking at the wrong 'thread environment
block' when trying to come back to UNIX mode. To avoid this, we now
pin ourselves to the current CPU when thunking into Windows code.
Few other cleanups, since I'm here:
- Get rid of the ndis_isr(), ndis_enable_interrupt() and
ndis_disable_interrupt() wrappers from kern_ndis.c and just invoke
the miniport's methods directly in the interrupt handling routines
in subr_ndis.c. We may as well lose the function call overhead,
since we don't need to export these things outside of ndis.ko
now anyway.
- Remove call to ndis_enable_interrupt() from ndis_init() in if_ndis.c.
We don't need to do it there anyway (the miniport init routine handles
it, if needed).
- Fix the logic in NdisWriteErrorLogEntry() a little.
- Change some NDIS_STATUS_xxx codes in subr_ntoskrnl.c into STATUS_xxx
codes.
- Handle kthread_create() failure correctly in PsCreateSystemThread().
and channel to ifconfig. Also use the SSID and channel info from
the association info that we already have instead of using ndis_get_info()
to ask the driver for it again.
to the actual dates when code actually changed. Also add special case
link state change handling for RELENG_5, which doesn't have
if_link_state_change(). No actual operational changes are done.
- Change ndis_return() from a DPC to a workitem so that it doesn't
run at DISPATCH_LEVEL (with the dispatcher lock held).
- In if_ndis.c, submit packets to the stack via (*ifp->if_input)() in
a workitem instead of doing it directly in ndis_rxeof(), because
ndis_rxeof() runs in a DPC, and hence at DISPATCH_LEVEL. This
implies that the 'dispatch level' mutex for the current CPU is
being held, and we don't want to call if_input while holding
any locks.
- Reimplement IoConnectInterrupt()/IoDisconnectInterrupt(). The original
approach I used to track down the interrupt resource (by scanning
the device tree starting at the nexus) is prone to problems when
two devices share an interrupt. (E.g removing ndis1 might disable
interrupts for ndis0.) The new approach is to multiplex all the
NDIS interrupts through a common internal dispatcher (ntoskrnl_intr())
and allow IoConnectInterrupt()/IoDisconnectInterrupt() to add or
remove interrupts from the dispatch list.
- Implement KeAcquireInterruptSpinLock() and KeReleaseInterruptSpinLock().
- Change the DPC and workitem threads to use the KeXXXSpinLock
API instead of mtx_lock_spin()/mtx_unlock_spin().
- Simplify the NdisXXXPacket routines by creating an actual
packet pool structure and using the InterlockedSList routines
to manage the packet queue.
- Only honor the value returned by OID_GEN_MAXIMUM_SEND_PACKETS
for serialized drivers. For deserialized drivers, we now create
a packet array of 64 entries. (The Microsoft DDK documentation
says that for deserialized miniports, OID_GEN_MAXIMUM_SEND_PACKETS
is ignored, and the driver for the Marvell 8335 chip, which is
a deserialized miniport, returns 1 when queried.)
- Clean up timer handling in subr_ntoskrnl.
- Add the following conditional debugging code:
NTOSKRNL_DEBUG_TIMERS - add debugging and stats for timers
NDIS_DEBUG_PACKETS - add extra sanity checking for NdisXXXPacket API
NTOSKRNL_DEBUG_SPINLOCKS - add test for spinning too long
- In kern_ndis.c, always start the HAL first and shut it down last,
since Windows spinlocks depend on it. Ntoskrnl should similarly be
started second and shut down next to last.
First and most importantly, I threw out the thread priority-twiddling
implementation of KeRaiseIrql()/KeLowerIrq()/KeGetCurrentIrql() in
favor of a new scheme that uses sleep mutexes. The old scheme was
really very naughty and sought to provide the same behavior as
Windows spinlocks (i.e. blocking pre-emption) but in a way that
wouldn't raise the ire of WITNESS. The new scheme represents
'DISPATCH_LEVEL' as the acquisition of a per-cpu sleep mutex. If
a thread on cpu0 acquires the 'dispatcher mutex,' it will block
any other thread on the same processor that tries to acquire it,
in effect only allowing one thread on the processor to be at
'DISPATCH_LEVEL' at any given time. It can then do the 'atomic sit
and spin' routine on the spinlock variable itself. If a thread on
cpu1 wants to acquire the same spinlock, it acquires the 'dispatcher
mutex' for cpu1 and then it too does an atomic sit and spin to try
acquiring the spinlock.
Unlike real spinlocks, this does not disable pre-emption of all
threads on the CPU, but it does put any threads involved with
the NDISulator to sleep, which is just as good for our purposes.
This means I can now play nice with WITNESS, and I can safely do
things like call malloc() when I'm at 'DISPATCH_LEVEL,' which
you're allowed to do in Windows.
Next, I completely re-wrote most of the event/timer/mutex handling
and wait code. KeWaitForSingleObject() and KeWaitForMultipleObjects()
have been re-written to use condition variables instead of msleep().
This allows us to use the Windows convention whereby thread A can
tell thread B "wake up with a boosted priority." (With msleep(), you
instead have thread B saying "when I get woken up, I'll use this
priority here," and thread A can't tell it to do otherwise.) The
new KeWaitForMultipleObjects() has been better tested and better
duplicates the semantics of its Windows counterpart.
I also overhauled the IoQueueWorkItem() API and underlying code.
Like KeInsertQueueDpc(), IoQueueWorkItem() must insure that the
same work item isn't put on the queue twice. ExQueueWorkItem(),
which in my implementation is built on top of IoQueueWorkItem(),
was also modified to perform a similar test.
I renamed the doubly-linked list macros to give them the same names
as their Windows counterparts and fixed RemoveListTail() and
RemoveListHead() so they properly return the removed item.
I also corrected the list handling code in ntoskrnl_dpc_thread()
and ntoskrnl_workitem_thread(). I realized that the original logic
did not correctly handle the case where a DPC callout tries to
queue up another DPC. It works correctly now.
I implemented IoConnectInterrupt() and IoDisconnectInterrupt() and
modified NdisMRegisterInterrupt() and NdisMDisconnectInterrupt() to
use them. I also tried to duplicate the interrupt handling scheme
used in Windows. The interrupt handling is now internal to ndis.ko,
and the ndis_intr() function has been removed from if_ndis.c. (In
the USB case, interrupt handling isn't needed in if_ndis.c anyway.)
NdisMSleep() has been rewritten to use a KeWaitForSingleObject()
and a KeTimer, which is how it works in Windows. (This is mainly
to insure that the NDISulator uses the KeTimer API so I can spot
any problems with it that may arise.)
KeCancelTimer() has been changed so that it only cancels timers, and
does not attempt to cancel a DPC if the timer managed to fire and
queue one up before KeCancelTimer() was called. The Windows DDK
documentation seems to imply that KeCantelTimer() will also call
KeRemoveQueueDpc() if necessary, but it really doesn't.
The KeTimer implementation has been rewritten to use the callout API
directly instead of timeout()/untimeout(). I still cheat a little in
that I have to manage my own small callout timer wheel, but the timer
code works more smoothly now. I discovered a race condition using
timeout()/untimeout() with periodic timers where untimeout() fails
to actually cancel a timer. I don't quite understand where the race
is, using callout_init()/callout_reset()/callout_stop() directly
seems to fix it.
I also discovered and fixed a bug in winx32_wrap.S related to
translating _stdcall calls. There are a couple of routines
(i.e. the 64-bit arithmetic intrinsics in subr_ntoskrnl) that
return 64-bit quantities. On the x86 arch, 64-bit values are
returned in the %eax and %edx registers. However, it happens
that the ctxsw_utow() routine uses %edx as a scratch register,
and x86_stdcall_wrap() and x86_stdcall_call() were only preserving
%eax before branching to ctxsw_utow(). This means %edx was getting
clobbered in some cases. Curiously, the most noticeable effect of this
bug is that the driver for the TI AXC110 chipset would constantly drop
and reacquire its link for no apparent reason. Both %eax and %edx
are preserved on the stack now. The _fastcall and _regparm
wrappers already handled everything correctly.
I changed if_ndis to use IoAllocateWorkItem() and IoQueueWorkItem()
instead of the NdisScheduleWorkItem() API. This is to avoid possible
deadlocks with any drivers that use NdisScheduleWorkItem() themselves.
The unicode/ansi conversion handling code has been cleaned up. The
internal routines have been moved to subr_ntoskrnl and the
RtlXXX routines have been exported so that subr_ndis can call them.
This removes the incestuous relationship between the two modules
regarding this code and fixes the implementation so that it honors
the 'maxlen' fields correctly. (Previously it was possible for
NdisUnicodeStringToAnsiString() to possibly clobber memory it didn't
own, which was causing many mysterious crashes in the Marvell 8335
driver.)
The registry handling code (NdisOpen/Close/ReadConfiguration()) has
been fixed to allocate memory for all the parameters it hands out to
callers and delete whem when NdisCloseConfiguration() is called.
(Previously, it would secretly use a single static buffer.)
I also substantially updated if_ndis so that the source can now be
built on FreeBSD 7, 6 and 5 without any changes. On FreeBSD 5, only
WEP support is enabled. On FreeBSD 6 and 7, WPA-PSK support is enabled.
The original WPA code has been updated to fit in more cleanly with
the net80211 API, and to eleminate the use of magic numbers. The
ndis_80211_setstate() routine now sets a default authmode of OPEN
and initializes the RTS threshold and fragmentation threshold.
The WPA routines were changed so that the authentication mode is
always set first, followed by the cipher. Some drivers depend on
the operations being performed in this order.
I also added passthrough ioctls that allow application code to
directly call the MiniportSetInformation()/MiniportQueryInformation()
methods via ndis_set_info() and ndis_get_info(). The ndis_linksts()
routine also caches the last 4 events signalled by the driver via
NdisMIndicateStatus(), and they can be queried by an application via
a separate ioctl. This is done to allow wpa_supplicant to directly
program the various crypto and key management options in the driver,
allowing things like WPA2 support to work.
Whew.
replacement and has additional features which make it superior.
Discussed on: -arch
Reviewed by: thompsa
X-MFC-after: never (RELENG_6 as transition period)
could get an interrupt after we free the ifp, and the interrupt
handler depended on the ifp being still alive, this could, in theory,
cause a crash. Eliminate this possibility by moving the if_free to
after the bus_teardown_intr() call.
IFF_DRV_RUNNING, as well as the move from ifnet.if_flags to
ifnet.if_drv_flags. Device drivers are now responsible for
synchronizing access to these flags, as they are in if_drv_flags. This
helps prevent races between the network stack and device driver in
maintaining the interface flags field.
Many __FreeBSD__ and __FreeBSD_version checks maintained and continued;
some less so.
Reviewed by: pjd, bz
MFC after: 7 days
over iteration of their multicast address lists when synchronizing the
hardware address filter with the network stack-maintained list.
Problem reported by: Ed Maste (emaste at phaedrus dot sandvine dot ca>
MFC after: 1 week
early. I've moved it all the way to the top rather than part way up as
the submitter did.
Submitted by: Jung-uk Kim <jkim at niksun dot com>
Reported by: submitter, le, dougb
Approved by: re (ifnet blanket)
struct ifnet or the layer 2 common structure it was embedded in have
been replaced with a struct ifnet pointer to be filled by a call to the
new function, if_alloc(). The layer 2 common structure is also allocated
via if_alloc() based on the interface type. It is hung off the new
struct ifnet member, if_l2com.
This change removes the size of these structures from the kernel ABI and
will allow us to better manage them as interfaces come and go.
Other changes of note:
- Struct arpcom is no longer referenced in normal interface code.
Instead the Ethernet address is accessed via the IFP2ENADDR() macro.
To enforce this ac_enaddr has been renamed to _ac_enaddr.
- The second argument to ether_ifattach is now always the mac address
from driver private storage rather than sometimes being ac_enaddr.
Reviewed by: sobomax, sam
We can't call KeFlushQueuedDpcs() during bootstrap (cold == 1), since
the flush operation sleeps to wait for completion, and we can't sleep
here (clowns will eat us).
On an i386 SMP system, if we're loaded/probed/attached during bootstrap,
smp_rendezvous() won't run us anywhere except CPU 0 (since the other CPUs
aren't launched until later), which means we won't be able to set up
the GDTs anywhere except CPU 0. To deal with this case, ctxsw_utow()
now checks to see if the TID for the current processor has been properly
initialized and sets up the GTD for the current CPU if not.
Lastly, in if_ndis.c:ndis_shutdown(), do an ndis_stop() to insure we
really halt the NIC and stop interrupts from happening.
Note that loading a driver during bootstrap is, unfortunately, kind of
a hit or miss sort of proposition. In Windows, the expectation is that
by the time a given driver's MiniportInitialize() method is called,
the system is already in 'multiuser' state, i.e. it's up and running
enough to support all the stuff specified in the NDIS API, which includes
the underlying OS-supplied facilities it implicitly depends on, such as
having all CPUs running, having the DPC queues initialized, WorkItem
threads running, etc. But in UNIX, a lot of that stuff won't work during
bootstrap. This causes a problem since we need to call MiniportInitialize()
at least once during ndis_attach() in order to find out what kind of NIC
we have and learn its station address.
What this means is that some cards just plain won't work right if
you try to pre-load the driver along with the kernel: they'll only be
probed/attach correctly if the driver is kldloaded _after_ the system
has reached multiuser. I can't really think of a way around this that
would still preserve the ability to use an NDIS device for diskless
booting.
prevent anything from making calls to the NIC while it's being shut down.
This is yet another attempt to stop things like mdnsd from trying to
poke at the card while it's not properly initialized and panicking
the system.
Also, remove unneeded debug message from if_ndis.c.
The Ralink RT2500 driver uses this API instead of NdisMIndicateReceivePacket().
Drivers use NdisMEthIndicateReceive() when they know they support
802.3 media and expect to hand their packets only protocols that want
to deal with that particular media type. With this API, the driver does
not manage its own NDIS_PACKET/NDIS_BUFFER structures. Instead, it
lets bound protocols have a peek at the data, and then they supply
an NDIS_PACKET/NDIS_BUFFER combo to the miniport driver, into which
it copies the packet data.
Drivers use NdisMIndicateReceivePacket() to allow their packets to
be read by any protocol, not just those bound to 802.3 media devices.
To make this work, we need an internal pool of NDIS_PACKETS for
receives. Currently, we check to see if the driver exports a
MiniportTransferData() method in its characteristics structure,
and only allocate the pool for drivers that have this method.
This should allow the RT2500 driver to work correctly, though I
still have to fix ndiscvt(8) to parse its .inf file properly.
Also, change kern_ndis.c:ndis_halt_nic() to reap timers before
acquiring NDIS_LOCK(), since the reaping process might entail sleeping
briefly (and we can't sleep with a lock held).
the same time.
Fix if_ndis_pccard.c so that it sets sc->ndis_dobj and sc->ndis_regvals.
Correct IMPORT_SFUNC() macros for the READ_PORT_BUFFER_xxx() routines,
which take 3 arguments, not 2.
This fixes it so that the Windows driver for my Cisco Aironet 340 PCMCIA
card works again. (Yes, I know the an(4) driver supports this card natively,
but it's the only PCMCIA device I have with a Windows XP driver.)
Remove unused fields from ndis_miniport_block.
Fix a bug in KeFlushQueuedDpcs() (we weren't calculating the kq pointer
correctly).
In if_ndis.c, clear the IFF_RUNNING flag before calling ndis_halt_nic().
Add some guards in kern_ndis.c to avoid letting anyone invoke ndis_get_info()
or ndis_set_info() if the NIC isn't fully initialized. Apparently, mdnsd
will sometimes try to invoke the ndis_ioctl() routine at exactly the
wrong moment (to futz with its multicast filters) when the interface
comes up, and can trigger a crash unless we guard against it.
- Remove the old task threads from kern_ndis.c and reimplement them in
subr_ntoskrnl.c, in order to more properly emulate the Windows DPC
API. Each CPU gets its own DPC queue/thread, and each queue can
have low, medium and high importance DPCs. New APIs implemented:
KeSetTargetProcessorDpc(), KeSetImportanceDpc() and KeFlushQueuedDpcs().
(This is the biggest change.)
- Fix a bug in NdisMInitializeTimer(): the k_dpc pointer in the
nmt_timer embedded in the ndis_miniport_timer struct must be set
to point to the DPC, also embedded in the struct. Failing to do
this breaks dequeueing of DPCs submitted via timers, and in turn
breaks cancelling timers.
- Fix a bug in KeCancelTimer(): if the timer is interted in the timer
queue (i.e. the timeout callback is still pending), we have to both
untimeout() the timer _and_ call KeRemoveQueueDpc() to nuke the DPC
that might be pending. Failing to do this breaks cancellation of
periodic timers, which always appear to be inserted in the timer queue.
- Make use of the nmt_nexttimer field in ndis_miniport_timer: keep a
queue of pending timers and cancel them all in ndis_halt_nic(), prior
to calling MiniportHalt(). Also call KeFlushQueuedDpcs() to make sure
any DPCs queued by the timers have expired.
- Modify NdisMAllocateSharedMemory() and NdisMFreeSharedMemory() to keep
track of both the virtual and physical addresses of the shared memory
buffers that get handed out. The AirGo MIMO driver appears to have a bug
in it: for one of the segments is allocates, it returns the wrong
virtual address. This would confuse NdisMFreeSharedMemory() and cause
a crash. Why it doesn't crash Windows too I have no idea (from reading
the documentation for NdisMFreeSharedMemory(), it appears to be a violation
of the API).
- Implement strstr(), strchr() and MmIsAddressValid().
- Implement IoAllocateWorkItem(), IoFreeWorkItem(), IoQueueWorkItem() and
ExQueueWorkItem(). (This is the second biggest change.)
- Make NdisScheduleWorkItem() call ExQueueWorkItem(). (Note that the
ExQueueWorkItem() API is deprecated by Microsoft, but NDIS still uses
it, since NdisScheduleWorkItem() is incompatible with the IoXXXWorkItem()
API.)
- Change if_ndis.c to use the NdisScheduleWorkItem() interface for scheduling
tasks.
With all these changes and fixes, the AirGo MIMO driver for the Belkin
F5D8010 Pre-N card now works. Special thanks to Paul Robinson
(paul dawt robinson at pwermedia dawt net) for the loan of a card
for testing.
here on in, if_ndis.ko will be pre-built as a module, and can be built
into a static kernel (though it's not part of GENERIC). Drivers are
created using the new ndisgen(8) script, which uses ndiscvt(8) under
the covers, along with a few other tools. The result is a driver module
that can be kldloaded into the kernel.
A driver with foo.inf and foo.sys files will be converted into
foo_sys.ko (and foo_sys.o, for those who want/need to make static
kernels). This module contains all of the necessary info from the
.INF file and the driver binary image, converted into an ELF module.
You can kldload this module (or add it to /boot/loader.conf) to have
it loaded automatically. Any required firmware files can be bundled
into the module as well (or converted/loaded separately).
Also, add a workaround for a problem in NdisMSleep(). During system
bootstrap (cold == 1), msleep() always returns 0 without actually
sleeping. The Intel 2200BG driver uses NdisMSleep() to wait for
the NIC's firmware to come to life, and fails to load if NdisMSleep()
doesn't actually delay. As a workaround, if msleep() (and hence
ndis_thsuspend()) returns 0, use a hard DELAY() to sleep instead).
This is not really the right thing to do, but we can't really do much
else. At the very least, this makes the Intel driver happy.
There are probably other drivers that fail in this way during bootstrap.
Unfortunately, the only workaround for those is to avoid pre-loading
them and kldload them once the system is running instead.