I have the Buster 10.1 Net-install iso, dd to a USB stick. I have a modern laptop with wifi only, no ethernet, and even if I had a USB ethernet dongle I've nowhere to plug the other end. The "non-free" iwl drivers for my intel system I have from the non-free firmware package, unpacked into a folder named
firmware at the root of another FAT32 USB stick. Selecting "Graphical Install" all goes well, wifi network recognised, WPA2 PSK entered and accepted, apt updated, base system installed. Then the option is given to install a Desktop environment. All of those offered, even the default Debian, which I understand is a slimmed down Gnome, install a camel train of other baggage, Office suites, toys and trinkets. Following the general advice I install only "System utilities".
After
grub is installed and the clock set, the installer pauses to tell you it will now reboot. At this stage a number of outdated posts around the net will say you should
Alt-F2 to drop into a shell and use
apt (or aptitude, or apt-get?) to install
sudo,
xorg and
network-manager, and to backup the network configuration to
/target/etc/network/interfaces. I can Alt-F2, or I can select a shell from the installer menu earlier in the process. Either way that tells me it is an
ash shell from
Busybox, and typing help for a list of commands shows a short list of things I would never use (but I'm not a hard-core terminal user). The list does not include
ls, but ls works.
su is not found, but the outdated advice above says you need to su to use apt. [apt | aptitude | apt-get] are not found.
Exit the shell, politely... Reboot.
sudo is installed, but could this be because I had chosen during install to have no root account? There is no network.
networkctl says so. The commands
ifdown ifup iplink ifconfig iwconfig are not found.
Code: Select all
$ ip a
auto lo
iface lo inet loopback
There are [generic | empty] config files at
/etc/networks and
/etc/network/interfaces. There is advice around the 'net that wifi config data should never appear in
/etc/network/interfaces. There are empty folders at
/etc/network/interfaces.d/ and
/etc/NetworkManager/conf.d/ Contrary to the implication of the
final 3 posts here the non-free iwl drivers appear to be installed at
/lib/firmware. If I had chosen any desktop environment, even the minimal Debian/Gnome, wifi is available immediately on reboot, no fuss, no bother. This IMNSHO is an installer bug. At least it is a
known problem, and continues the known problem
from wired networks. In the meantime I guess I can add some *.deb to that firmware folder, mount it at
/mnt/things, and manually install whatever is needed, but I'd welcome any suggestions as to how to find out what minimum I still need.