Nonfree firmware wi-fi driver needed at installation.
 

Hi: I am installing Debian Strech (netinst) on an Acer Aspire One Cloudbook. At certain point during the installation the installer says something like (in the detect internet connection step) "the driver needed is nonfree firmware. Insert removable media (USB stick or floppy disk) with this file: iwlwifi-3160-17.ucode". What I did is this: I deleted all the partitions of a USB 2.0 stick and created a 1GB type 0C (W95 FAT32 (LBA)) partition with cfdisk. Then I ran mkfs.vfat /dev/sda and copied the file to the stick.

Alright. However when the installer asked for the media, I inserted it but it did not recognized it. It insisted in the same message ("Please insert ..."). What am I to do?

I went through a similar process when I installed Stretch, although the installer did recognize my USB 2 flash drive. I have found that this USB 2 drive won't work on a USB 3 port. You didn't happen to plug it into a USB 3 port? Just a thought.

I have only two USB ports. One is blue and the other has no recognizable color. In spite of this, the USB stick I used is supposedly 3.0 and works fine with the no color port. So I guess both ports are 3.0 in spite of the colors. Unfortunately, when I bought the stick I through away the envilope and so I now can't check the version. So it could be both USB ports are 3.0 and the stick I used is 2.0, which is the case you mention. I think the only way is to be certain which version are the ports and which version is the stick. Any linux tool to do check this?

Anyway, I have the debian distro alive and running. So, knowing precisely which the needed driver is, I pressume I could install it while I run the OS. Which would be a way to do this?

EDIT: I have the driver. So I think I could copy it to /lib/firmware and make a 'modprobe iwlwifi-3160-17.ucode'. Could it work? But then I need a procedure to make sure I have internet connectivity. Would the ping command be of any use?

Just to clarify USB 3 device will work in a USB 2 port and vice-versa -- the standards are forwards and backwards compatible and the host and device will operate at the lowest specification that the two have in common.
For Debian with non-free firmware have you tried the following?
https://cdimage.debian.org/cdimage/u...ding-firmware/
I'm actually having a similar problem where I can't install a bootable Debian with the drivers for any of my network cards, two wired and one wireless, working because, while the wireless driver may be working, I can't boot to a desktop. So I'm rooting for you!

The only command I can find that clearly gives the USB version of a device is usbview. The commands lshw and lsusb will list the hardware ports. I must run usbview and lshw as administrative user for them to work, although I am currently booted to Ubuntu, which might be different from Debian.

Thanks to jlinkels I found this: https://cdimage.debian.org/cdimage/u...ding-firmware/ Here a netinst cd/usb image with non-free firmware is available. I installed it and everyhting went well.

Here's the Debian page on loading non-free firmware during installation: https://www.debian.org/releases/stab...h06s04.html.en