tgftw wrote:I'll update the main post with results when I get them and clean up the formatting, so if anybody else runs into this they can make sense of it.
I haven't abandoned this, I simply haven't had any good results yet.
Yesterday I tried replacing my wifi adapter, I've got
three different chipsets, all of which I have the appropriate firmware for... one of which is even a free chipset. I've tried
mini.iso, *-netinst*.iso, the Debian XFCE flavored CD ISO... I've tried
Sid repos, I've tried standard
Stretch...
firmware from each...I've tried
robust installations (CLI only though) and
minimal installations, with and without
excess drivers, with and without
"standard system utilities" or whatever it's called... I've followed directions step-by-step from the
Debian wiki, even tried the advice on the
Arch wiki since it's so well documented and often times mostly interchangable.
In the end, I'm not able to take a system from CLI to the internet without an ethernet cable or GUI under any circumstances.
If I install xorg, openbox, and wicd, everything works as expected, with all of the network devices. But I really didn't want a GUI on this system, it only has 1GB of RAM and has plenty of tasks to perform without the UI. So now my problem has evolved from
"The installer doesn't remember my wireless settings" to
"I can't connect wirelessly under any circumstances from the command line."
I know my circumstances aren't desirable but I figured it should be possible. I'm sure it is, the installer can do it...
The best I've done so far is get the firmware installed, get connected to my network. But then, I can't get DHCP, and setting static doesn't work either. There are multiple other devices on my network, so lack of a DHCP server is not the case, I have a router handling that. Internet is working on everything but this.
My most recent attempt went like this:
[revealed the name of my wifi adapter, wlx9cefd5fe52a5 and the fact that it's currently state DOWN]
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sudo ip link set wlx9cefd5fe52a5 up
[i'm assuming this is supposed to set the link status to UP, just following along with the wiki]
[no changes here though, still reported as DOWN]
[my wifi network was found here, had to use shift+pgup and shift+pgdn to find it - noted exact ESSID, it's in quotations, one of the lines that starts with IE: specified encryption type, in my case it looked like:]
IE: IEEE 802.11i/WPA2 Version 1
Group Cipher : CCMP
Pairwise Ciphers (1) : CCMP
Authentication Suites (1) : PSK
[This tells me I'm using WPA2-PSK encryption]
[this is where things went wrong last time.]
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sudo chmod 0600 /etc/network/interfaces
[restrict permissions, to keep psk private]
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wpa_passphrase {ssid} {passphrase}
[generated my encrypted key - i suspect if your ssid has any spaces in it you have to use quotations]
[used the format below, appended to the end, tried ssid with and without quotes]
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iface wlan0 inet dhcp
wpa-ssid myssid
wpa-psk superlongencryptedpassphraseasgeneratedbytheprevioussteps
Ctrl+x to exit, y to save, enter to choose filename
Only to arrive firmly at:
No DHCPOFFERS received.
No working leases in persistent database - sleeping.
To fix this, I was lead to try editing dhconfig.conf, only to "find / dhconfig.conf" had 'No such file or directory,' seems like I must not have that software.
On reboot, my startup procedure gives me:
A start job is running for Raise network interfaces... [forever]
It's a long shot but somebody recommended adding irqpoll to the boot arguments, but it was for a seemingly different issue.
'e' on the Grub screen, I added 'irqpoll' before quiet, no change to symptoms.
Tried manually configuring IP as described on the Debian wiki, no results.
Arch wiki described doing all these same steps through the wpa-cli interface. I figure why not, lets try it. I followed their directions appropriately, and ended up exactly at the same dead end.
ping 8.8.8.8 <- no longer tells me the network is unreachable, it just stalls out forever and the packets never come back. This is the case using DHCP or Static settings.
when I do ifup on my interface, it attempts DHCP handshaking six or eight times, then gives up. Curiously, it seems to be using the hostmask 255.255.255.255 which seems incorrect, I've always used 255.255.255.0 for my networks in the past, but it's possible that what I'm seeing there isn't actually the hostmask.
So, that's where I'm at currently. I don't really expect anybody to pop up with a solution, I actually feel like this is something really easy that everybody should know how to do, especially considering the vast quantity of resources available on the topic.
I followed all the top Google results for my most recent error message, which is in bold above... did all the suggested things, to no avail.
But again, if I use any ISO to install on a wired interface (which I can't do anymore sadly, different environment) and then just download wicd, it takes care of all the background stuff and I end up with a working connection.
Maybe I should run a VM on another machine, and start wicd from the console, it might output information along the way to guide me in the proper direction? Honestly, I'm feeling very lost at the moment. Not to mention unproductive, three days ago I was supposed to have started a project... can't even get my OS installed, haha. Classic PEBCAK error, I'm sure.