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debian wifi issue laptop

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tendouser
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debian wifi issue laptop

#1 Post by tendouser »

Do you know why WiFi in Stretch is loading and working fine some times and some times it just doesn't load the driver or it list available networks but doesn't connect to any of them and the xfce freezes??

Cheers guys!

arochester
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Re: debian wifi issue laptop

#2 Post by arochester »

How about giving a little more information?

What is the MAKE and MODEL of your laptop? How much RAM has it got?

What Wireless chip is it? What firmware have you loaded? What program are you using to connect?

tendouser
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Re: debian wifi issue laptop

#3 Post by tendouser »

ASUS
Vivobook
X540SA-SCL0205N

4GB RAM

Stretch by deafult has XFCE so I'm using the Network Manager Applet.

Cheers.

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stevepusser
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Re: debian wifi issue laptop

#4 Post by stevepusser »

Install inxi and then give the result of

Code: Select all

inxi -N
so we have some idea of what your wifi hardware and driver are.
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tendouser
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Re: debian wifi issue laptop

#5 Post by tendouser »

inxi -N output:

Network: Card-1: Realtek RTL8101/2/6E PCI Express Fast/Gigabit Ethernet controller
driver: r8169
Card-2: Realtek RTL8723BE PCIe Wireless Network Adapter
driver: rtl8723be

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Hallvor
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Re: debian wifi issue laptop

#6 Post by Hallvor »

Do you have firmware-realtek (from non-free) installed?

https://packages.debian.org/stretch/firmware-realtek
[HowTo] Install and configure Debian bookworm
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tendouser
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Re: debian wifi issue laptop

#7 Post by tendouser »

is it possible to keep the Stretch driver without getting this issue?

Cheers.

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debiman
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Re: debian wifi issue laptop

#8 Post by debiman »

installing firmware does NOT mean uninstalling the driver.
for some hardware, installing firmware is a necessary step and cannot be included in the installer because of licensing issues.

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Re: debian wifi issue laptop

#9 Post by stevepusser »

The driver is built into the kernel (linux-image) package, but still needs some non-free firmware to run.

If you do a web search for your particular card and linux problems, you'll find hundreds of reports of those and attempted solutions. We are not going to hold your hand and do the search for you...do some research, find a thread where they seem to have solved the same issue as you have, and then come back here and ask how to duplicate that in Debian if it's over your head at the moment.
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tendouser
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Re: debian wifi issue laptop

#10 Post by tendouser »

does installation of firmware may affect my WiFi under Windows 10?
does firmware installed works with any OS I boot into?

cheers!

shep
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Re: debian wifi issue laptop

#11 Post by shep »

does installation of firmware may affect my WiFi under Windows 10?
does firmware installed works with any OS I boot into?
Firmware is loaded by all Operating systems; Windows/Mac/Linux/BSD, during boot. It is not retained when shutting down. Additionally, the Firmware is the same for all Operating systems.

When starting Debian, firmware can only be loaded from /lib/firmware.

See https://wiki.debian.org/Firmware for more details.

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Re: debian wifi issue laptop

#12 Post by stevepusser »

tendouser wrote:does installation of firmware may affect my WiFi under Windows 10?
does firmware installed works with any OS I boot into?

cheers!
In short, no to both questions.

You can't get any connection at all without the firmware, so I am pretty sure you have it installed. What do you get with

Code: Select all

apt policy firmware-realtek
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tendouser
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Re: debian wifi issue laptop

#13 Post by tendouser »

apt policy firmaware-realtek output:

firmware-realtek:
Installed: 20161130-3
Candidate: 20161130-3
Version table:
*** 20161130-3 500
500 http://deb.debian.org/debian stretch/non-free amd64 Packages
100 /var/lib/dpkg/status

"You can't get any connection at all without the firmware" - as explained on the incipit, before installing firmware-realtek, I had WiFi sometimes when booting into Debian; when WiFi wasn't available the xfce4 was freezing intermittently and sometimes completely. Another description in regard to this issue is that sometimes I had WiFi available networks listed and sometimes not.

But now, problem is gone; is working great 'till now.

Cheers guys!

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