new Debian 10.4 installation - no internet, stuck on boot because of nvidia
 

It's my first time installing linux, everything done from bootable USB stick with debian-10.4.0-amd64-xfce-CD-1 on it. I had to go for the non network version because my only connectivity is USB adapter WiFi. This led me to the problem I'm stuck on which is that I have to install non-free nvidia drivers to get Debian to run, or at least that's my understanding of "nouveau unknown chipset (166000a1)" and "failed to start light display manager" errors. However to get this to run I need to be able to install linux headers and that either requires an internet connection or access to packages on the ISO. To get my WiFi to play I also need the same thing. This is where I am stuck.

I have tried mounting my USB stick to ~/UsbStick and then added "deb [trusted=yes] file:/root/UsbStick buster main contrib" to my /etc/apt/sources.list - then running apt-get update with results showing in this picture: https://imgur.com/a/hmR3b6S

I also tried "apt-cdrom --cdrom /root/UsbStick add" to see if I maybe could get the system to buy the usb stick as a cdrom and then list it in sources.list for me, but that also resulted in errors.

UPDATE: After installing nvidia drivers I can now boot into desktop. However my WiFi won't connect. Adding following posts to this to make it easier to read #8:

Ran into an issue when trying to connect to my WiFi. First of all after installing the drivers the device shows up as "wlx1831bf56cb6f" in iwconfig. A bit strange but I don't know enough about this to deem it as broken. On we go.

the "state DOWN" catches my eye but I don't know. I create a wpa_supplicant.conf with the correct SSID and passkey, and load it up with

Am I doing something wrong or is the driver installation borked?

#12

so since I'm unable to connect to my network through either wpa_supplicant and nmcli, I'm unable through the desktop shortcuts. Now the question becomes do I try to purge the drivers (if yes, how? "get purge rtl8812au"?) and install alternate ones?

edit: is there any way to rename this device to something less tedious to type out than "wlx1831bf56cb6f"? it makes configuring it horrible.

SOLVED: After installing different drivers, suggested by colorpurple21859, state turned to DORMANT and I could now see all wifi networks and connect to them.

Hi!

I'm not an expert and you told nothing about you hardware ...

But to avoid the most common issues related to proprietary drivers during the install process,
you may use one of the installers shipping non-free firmware : HERE
This solves kind of problems you're facing

Using a live image you even be able to check if things go well in the live session one of them comes with XFCE as seems to be you wish ;-))

Hoping that will help you
... Wellcome to Debian !

You will enjoy ... for sure!

Thank you for the reply dezix, I will look into the non-free firmware installer.

As for my issue I finally made the USB stick repo work by instead of using ~/UsbStick I used /media/usb. I don't know why this made a difference but it did. However I am now stuck with the issue that I don't have "make". As I was trying to install my WiFi drivers this came up. After successfully installing linux-headers, I tried "apt install build-essential" to get access to "make" but got the error message that build-essential couldn't be found. Is this package not part of the CD1 ISO of Debian?

The hardware that I have to manually install is ASUS USB-AC56 (rtl8812au chipset) and my RTX2070. Obviously this would be immensely much easier if I already had internet access as I could just get everything from there. However I kind of see this as a way to learn to use the system too, so it's not all bad.

I'm not so sure about that,
I've some times encountered difficulties with missing firmware during the install with NetInstall and I'd never success to provide it at this point.

For that reason I use now unofficial NetInstall with non-free firmwares,
and it goes pretty better.

But, as said before, I'm no expert at all.

As one has to use a non-free equipment,
non-free installer at the beginning or to add non-free later doesn't change the non-free final state.

So I choose the easy way.

shuv1t,

You may only need to use apt-offline to install build-essential:
https://www.ostechnix.com/fully-upda...based-systems/

apt-offline download for Linux (deb):

https://pkgs.org/download/apt-offline

Failing that, start again and edit your sources.list:

with the following lines:

Then:

Next, install the Realtek rtl8821au driver:

Good luck.

Wouldn't "git clone https://github.com/scrivy/rtl8812AU_8821AU_linux.git" require you to be online?

Either way it's not a big deal as I've downloaded the git files and put on the USB stick. I can just build it from there.

I ran into the same stuck on boot when using debian-live-10.4.0-amd64-xfce+nonfree.iso - will now try and see if I have "make" so I can get to installing my drivers.

Ran into an issue when trying to connect to my WiFi. First of all after installing the drivers the device shows up as "wlx1831bf56cb6f" in iwconfig. A bit strange but I don't know enough about this to deem it as broken. On we go.

the "state DOWN" catches my eye but I don't know. I create a wpa_supplicant.conf with the correct SSID and passkey, and load it up with

Am I doing something wrong or is the driver installation borked?

For the graphic card look at https://wiki.debian.org/NvidiaGraphi...#nvidia-detect

you may use nvidia-detect and nvidia-driver

Description of nvidia-driver
shows :

xserver-xorg-video-nouveau free driver supports many Nvidia products too.

Your rtx 2070 is listed HERE for nvidia-driver package

Thank you for the replies, but all of those require me to be online yes? Or should I try downloading them to an USB stick and building them from there?

edit: I downloaded the driver and since it was a .run it installed by itself when I ran it from the USB stick. Yay, I can now see the GUI!

edit2: so obviously since I'm unable to connect to my network through either wpa_supplicant and nmcli, I'm unable through the desktop shortcuts. Now the question becomes do I try to purge the drivers (if yes, how? "get purge rtl8812au"?) and install alternate ones?

At the grub menu press e and add nomodeset to the end of the line that begins with linux. Maybe that will get you further along.

This was one of the first things I tried when I my boot failed. Not sure if that's gonna help with my WiFi adapter though, unless I'm missing something?

No, that only helps sometimes with video problems.
You will have to build the driver for you wireless adapter which is troublesome if you don't have an internet connection to begin with. If you can purchase a usb wifi adapter that will work with linux straight up would be your best bet.
Did you successfully run the make and 'make install' commands for your wifi adapter driver?