How to install Debian 7 "Wheezy" on a Toshiba SatelliteC870D

[toshibac870d]

I had to install debian on my machine in the "worst possible" conditions - all I had for internet was my sierra aircard, and it didn't provide an ethernet port. Here's how I did it:

First, I downloaded the debian ISO from cdimage.debian.org - I wanted the Xfce desktop environment, so I picked http://cdimage.debian.org/debian-cd/cur ... e-CD-1.iso. My mouse didn't work with the graphical install, so I had to use the CLI install, which wasn't a problem. I got to the part where it was scanning for internet and failed (because the realtek driver wasn't installed), so I just said "no, I don't want to use internet during the install" (The Sierra Aircard doesn't provide an ethernet port). I then finished the install.

Booting into debian worked, but X just loaded a blank screen, So I booted into recovery mode. Once in recovery mode, I got onto another computer (connected to the internet, had wifi) and downloaded two packages: firmware-linux-nonfree and firmware-realtek. These are both non-free. You can get them from here: http://packages.debian.org/stable/firmw ... ux-nonfree and here: http://packages.debian.org/stable/firmware-realtek

I put these two .deb files on a USB drive, and got onto my new debian install. I inserted the USB drive into my computer, and ran

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ls -l /dev/disk/by-id/usb*

to see which /dev/ port the usb drive used. I ran

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mkdir /mnt

and

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mount /dev/<wherever my /dev/ entry was> /mnt

then, I cd'd into /mnt and ran

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dpkg -i firmware-realtek<rest of filename>

and then

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dpkg -i firmware-linux-nonfree<rest>

. I then had to set up Wi-Fi.
Run

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nano /etc/wpa_supplicant.conf

and then write this into the editor:

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network={
             ssid="wifi_ssid"
             psk="wifi_password"
}

(replacing "wifi_ssid" and "wifi_password" with the proper values, of course)
press Ctrl + O and hit enter, and then press Ctrl + X.
Now run:

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wpa_supplicant -B -iwlan0 -c/etc/wpa_supplicant.conf -Dwext && dhclient wlan0

You should have Wi-Fi! Run

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ping -c 1 google.com

to be sure
Now, I installed xserver-xorg-video-radeon with

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aptitude install xserver-xorg-video-radeon

Now, everything should work. I didn't like LightDM, so I installed GDM3:

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aptitude install gdm3

And thats it! Hope I helped!

[anastasis]

That's really great, man.

On my Toshiba Satellite A55-S326 what I did was put the install disc in the round thingy and press

ENTER

ENTER

ENTER

ENTER

ENTER

ENTER

ENTER

And that got me LXDE with Wheezy 7.1