This is no emergency, but I am quite keen to try and achieve this and learn from it also without too much stress.
I made a start today on trying to set up a second laptop with Debian beginning from the netinstall iso, the one with the non-free firmware. I thought/ knew from the outset that without an ethernet port it would be either tricky or impossible but pressed on with this. During install the wifi worked, connecting to my tethered phone, which is what i use in my own home.
I found pages on wpa_supplicant and followed these to the letter. I am completely blank as to how to start the interface though. 'wlo1' is 'DOWN'. The phrase I found which begins 'ifup' (sorry, I don't have it all to hand) which as i understood it would start the wifi did not.
Feels a bit annoying that wifi works during install and then it forgets what it knew once you're installed.
I used the same sim then in a 3g router connected through USB. This was seen, as far as i can tell', as if ethernet, but again the interface is down. I have used this router like this with a full OS and DE where it acts like ethernet, i.e. no password needed etc.
I am working against a health problem which makes me a bit sketchy at times but feel sure I managed an install like this once. I could describe myself as having PTSD from some things that have happened and am a bit delicate, too much so for anything near sarcasm.
As of an hour's time I have access to someone else's internet for a day, with my own data credit due to run out very soon. So I have a narrow window to try and finish this job else I'll revert to reinstalling Debian LXDE from a live CD for now. But was very impressed with how my other machine runs when having built the OS from netinstall.
They may have a USB port on their router, but I don't know if that means this will act as if i have ethernet, trouble-free, if i connect that way.
I have all the deb files I'd be downloading on another machine, and have copied these to an external hard drive and burned them to a DVD. Is it possible to get my ethernet-free laptop to read from these at all? I thought I might be able to copy these debs to /var/apt/cache/archives/ and take it from there, and would then soon have Wicd installed, simplifying what feels otherwise very vague.
Could I put something like 'home/me/Downloads/debs/' in my sources.list or does that just not work?
Thanks for any gentle help.
Let me know if i've missed anything out detail-wise.