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Netinstall and my Think Penguin wireless doesn't work

Ask for help with issues regarding the Installations of the Debian O/S.
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jeffnz
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Joined: 2017-03-14 16:55

Netinstall and my Think Penguin wireless doesn't work

#1 Post by jeffnz »

Do I need to install something to make the USB wireless thingy work? It has built-in drivers but it isn't working. I added the wireless network and typed in the password but the adapter doesn't work ... it has a permanent green light. It should BLINK green, not stay on. Something is wrong here.


jeffnz
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Re: Netinstall and my Think Penguin wireless doesn't work

#3 Post by jeffnz »

Ya I rebooted and still have the same issue. It might be faster to install another minimal distro instead of trying to fix this. The whole point of Think Penguin is that it's meant to work out of the box - I checked the supported kernel version and it should have worked.

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stevepusser
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Re: Netinstall and my Think Penguin wireless doesn't work

#4 Post by stevepusser »

Slam another shot if you're playing the "where's the wifi firmware" drinking game.

Almost all USB and PCI wifi chipsets require proprietary firmware blobs be loaded by the driver into the hardware to work, and no doubt yours falls into this category. Per its commitment to open software, Debian does not ship non-free firmware with the standard ISOs, but make it available in a non-free section of the repository for easy installation, and there are also unofficial versions of the ISOs that include the firmware.

Anyway, we need to see the result of the lsusb command in a terminal in order to tell you what firmware package you need. If you have a wired connection, it can be installed by adding the non-free section of the repo, otherwise it can be downloaded on any connected machine and transferred to the Debian install for manual installation.
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Re: Netinstall and my Think Penguin wireless doesn't work

#5 Post by arochester »

Debian 7 & 8 require the installation of firmware. See our support documentation for details.
- https://www.thinkpenguin.com/gnu-linux/ ... pe-n150usb

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Re: Netinstall and my Think Penguin wireless doesn't work

#6 Post by stevepusser »

If it's using the AR9271 chipset, it needs firmware-atheros: https://packages.debian.org/jessie/firmware-atheros

Download link is near the bottom of the page.

It seems that the firmware for it is open--why doesn't Debian include it? https://wiki.debian.org/ath9k_htc/open_firmware
Last edited by stevepusser on 2017-03-14 20:18, edited 1 time in total.
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jeffnz
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Re: Netinstall and my Think Penguin wireless doesn't work

#7 Post by jeffnz »

Regarding the Think Penguin page, the list of supported distros is so long that I'd never-ever read it. Good to know that Debian works just fine, later this year I want to do some development in Linux so I guess Debian would be ideal. I'll be back :P

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