I have Linux on two SD cards. One works fine but the other one seems to have problems, including not connecting to WiFi. I don't have a wired network connection therefore I can't try to update or upgrade the problem SD card. Can I update the bad card if it is just plugged in as a USB memory and not the running system? A simple problem, I hope!

It depends what you mean by update.

If you want to edit configuration files from another system, then yes, you could mount the SD cards partition(s) and edit files.

If you want to use a package manager for the distro, the answer is no.

Not connecting to wifi is probably best fixed from within the running system, unless you have knowledge of the configuration files.

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Hi TerryR and welcome to LQ.

Sure you can do this. Best if you can boot off of one SD card and then have the other one plugged in as a drive so you can see it. Then you can update it with an ISO image you've downloaded from the web. Another alternative is if you wish to make both drives identical, is to get an image of the working one and then copying that image to the one you wish to change. A lot of this is preference however. Do you wish to try to overwrite the one with the WIFI problem entirely, or do you wish to try an fix it by doing upgrades? This will be very difficult if you do not have a network working, and further, if you do not have sufficient disk space to keep images of these disks for copying.

Therefore a bit more about the limitations you face and how you'd like to see this work out.

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Rtmistler, thanks for the welcome, and for the advice. I think I would like to completely overwrite the bad SD by a copy of the working SD. It seems the best option. Maybe I could make a backup of the "bad" one first? I may have installed things on it that I would like to keep but have forgotten!