I decided to try out the Debian Live CD, installing a copy on my HD. OK...so the first thing I must do is access my wireless network, after which I guess I can start downloading software with apt-get. I've never tried accessing my network from a command line without wicd, and this Debian CD didn't have it, so I went to my Linux partition that had a working connection and read up on the commands to manually access the network. Ifconfig, iwlist, iwconfig, dhclient.

After some Googling I found this website http://www.ghacks.net/2009/04/14/con...-command-line/, went back to the new Debian installation, and tried the commands. "Ifconfig wlan0 up" resulted in "Error--failed to request firmware." I'm not sure whether that means the distro doesn't include firmware for my wireless card (Linksys WMP54G v.4, chipset Ralink RT2561) or the system didn't try to use the firmware (taken literally, it seems to mean that).

I tried "Dhclient wlan0" to see what would happen. It gave the same error message.

The system apparently doesn't even know ifconfig or iwlist; both produced "command not found."

So I'm at a loss. I have no idea how I'm supposed to get online to download and install software with this Debian installation. This seems to be beyond my very limited command line experience. How disappointing.

You need to down load the firmware. iwlist and iwconfig are part of the wireless-tools package.
http://wiki.debian.org/rt61pci

You understand my problem, don't you? I can't download anything in this Debian installation because it can't get online. I used to face this circular problem all the time, before I learned how to easily connect to my network on distros that have a wireless network manager (Networkmanager or Wicd). I'll have to download the firmware from my other installation (this one), copy it over, and then install it. Ehh...I guess I can handle it. What a mess. I wonder whether the liveCD included no wireless card firmware at all, or whether the liveCD's designers thought my particular wireless card wasn't very common.

rt61 is in the non-free section, so you need to enable the non-free repos by editing /etc/apt/sources.list
The live-cd has network capabilities somehow you need to use it to get connection & edit sources.list, update & install firmware.
I saw a tutorial on it but can't find it.

OK...I'll look for this tutorial.

I should apologize for probably causing confusion. I am referring to the Debian liveCD, not "Debian Live," the process of making your own customized iso from scripts.

You can't connect via ethernet connection?

There isn't an ethernet connection. I think my motherboard has an ethernet card, but my network is wireless. I use a wireless PCI card and the router is in another room.

Get the packages you need from your install that works. Put them on your new install. Boot to it and install with gdebi.

http://www.debian.org/CD/faq/#nonfree


Maybe this will help you understand what is going on with Debian. If you take widget's suggestion that should work.

Before doing as you suggest, I went to the Debian installation I'm working on and checked whether it had gdebi at all. Apparently it doesn't. It doesn't know the command, even as root. This is getting ridiculous. Is the Debian liveCD stripped of everything I might need to establish a network connection? I realize that the designers meant for the user to choose almost all software and therefore they don't include much on the CD, but since a user of any distro can't download software without having an internet connection first, to not include a means of connecting (or to make it very difficult for a non-expert) seems counterproductive.

If it doesn't have gdebi-gtk the ' dpkg -i ' will do the same thing.

DebianLive does not contain non-free firmware. If you have your heart set on using a command line environment only you are going to have to install the firmware either by follwing Widget's suggestion, only using dpkg instead of gdebi as 62chevy said, or by using a flash drive and copying it over and again using dpkg, or install DebianLive with a desktop envorinment and using gdebi.

There are 2 other ways, make your own DebianLive with the required firmware, or get the firmware ready on a flash drive and reinstall DebianLive it should ask you if you want to install non-free firmware and if you have it on the flash drive it should locate it for you and install it.

Oh, no...I mean to use a GUI. The only reason I'm fooling around with a command line when I have minimal experience with one is because this Debian liveCD doesn't appear to include X or a desktop manager. (I typed "startx," but it didn't work. I didn't think it would, because if it came with X, why wouldn't it start X automatically?) Anyway, I'll do as suggested.

The live CD for Debian Squeeze includes all the needed Xorg stuff needed to run your system. The "standard" CD includes the Gnome Desktop Environment. That should include gdebi.

The whole point of having a Live CD is so that folks can try out the release without installing the OS. Then you can install it if you like it. After installing it should be pretty much the same as you experienced in the Live Session.

I think you have more problems than you think. Even though the Live Session worked (I am assuming that it did) did you check the md5sum of the image you downloaded (the ISO file)?

The Debian installer is very reliable, at least for the stable release (Squeeze). It would be good to know if that ISO was correct.

Did you try booting to "recovery"? This could be the way you are getting to the tty prompt but I do not know that. Recovery mode can, at times, fix things on its own.

If you have not changed your sources.list, or the installer didn't, you may be able to try installing the missing parts from it to at least get you a working system.

I think I would be a lot more interested in getting a working, if not connected, system before worrying too much about anything else.