Hi,

I'm running Debian on a Dell Inspiron Mini 9, with no GUI. Command uname -a gives Linux vostroa90 3.2.0-4-686-pae #1 SMP Debian 3.2.60-1+deb7u1 i686 GNU/Linux. I want to set this up as a server of sorts that I can SSH from another computer, which is why it has no GUI. But the wireless card is not configured and, being entirely new to Linux, knowing only like ls and cd, I don't even know where to begin. Could someone walk me through?

Go here and do the stuff it says.

http://wireless.kernel.org/en/users/Drivers/b43

That's as good a walk through as you will find anywhere.

1 members found this post helpful.

Hi,

thanks. I think I've seen this before. My problem was I couldn't configure an ethernet cable, either, by which to get internet and download the firmware. Even after adding in an instruction to autoconfig the ethernet, with dhcp (a Linux pro walked me through, scratching his head), it still wouldn't work, so I couldn't get on to download the firmware.

Edit the file at /etc/network/interfaces
Bring up the interface using:

If I type in the second thing to bring up the file, it doesn't work. I'm supposed to get an editing window, right? I recognize the eth0 configuration; I know that part looks like that, though I can't find the file now. But I hadn't paid attention to the wireless card before,

if I type in # ifup <interface>, nothing happens. If I type it in w/ sudo, it brings up stuff about usage. Whereis gives 'interface' as not existing. 'interfaces' is in usr/share/man/man5/ interfaces.5.gz

Does it matter that when I shut down it deconfigures network information?

The first code block is the stuff you need to add to the text file located at /etc/network/interfaces

The second code block is a command that you must run as root (this is what the "#" symbol means).

After adding the contents of the first code block to the text file, save the file -- you must edit it as root to do this, use this command:
Use <Ctrl>+x and press "y" and return to save the file when you have added the stanzas I have posted.

Then open a terminal and type:
When you have the wireless working, the stanzas will bring this up automatically on boot.

EDIT: Sorry, I should have been much more explicit in my first post -- I was using an Ubuntu live disk and I wanted it all to stop...

Okay, so I have that in the text file, but here's a question. If I do iconfig, the ethernet thing that pops up is eth1, not eth0. So should I have it as eth1 in the text file? iconfig doesn't show any eth0.

---------- Post added 01-25-15 at 03:40 PM ----------

Thanks for being so patient, by the way. Especially with someone who has no idea what he's doing.

If I 'ifup' eth0, it can't find it. If I ifup eth1, it says 'Ignoring unknown interface eth1=eth1.'

'wlan1' is listed as 'Link encap:Ethernet HWaddr'. Is one of the Link encaps supposed to be like a wireless card?

Okay, changed the name to 'eth1' to experiment. It said it was 'Listening' to and then 'Sending' and then many lines of 'DHCPDDISCOVER on eth1 to [255. four times] port 67 interval [3, 5, 10, 13, 9, 20, 1]'
No DHCPOFFERS recieved, but does that mean it looked? If I now plugged in the ethernet, would it find it?
Last line: 'No working leases in persistent database - sleeping.'

I rebooted, logged in as root, and checked eth1: 'interface already configured.' Let's try downloading 'build-essentials'…

Yes you will need to change the interface names to the ones that actually exist in your system, both in the text file and in the commands passed

EDIT: this command will show you all the network interfaces on your system:

I ping 8.8.8.8'd, which someone told me to do to check connection once, and it won't stop… What's going on?

---------- Post added 01-25-15 at 03:59 PM ----------

Oh. I got it.