[conspire] CABAL, water-table replenishment edition

[Rick Moen]

Quoting Paul Zander (paulz at ieee.org):

> I expect to come, and hopefully finally get virtualization to work on
> the laptop. 
> 
> As previously discussed, 
   
I look forward to attempting to assist, though I'm unclear on the 'I
made some attempts to run VirtualBox, but have not successful' bit.

Just a brief bit of meta-commentary:

Public mailing list forums have many virtues, but suffer a
(metaphorical) attention deficit, alongside some social dysfunctions.
What I'm suggesting is that your problem _should_ have been solvable in
this forum many weeks if not months ago, but foundered on a small lack
of clarity, lack of focus, deficiency of collective memory, and the
tendency of forums like this one to barrage people with random
suggestions from well-intentioned people not necessarily cognizant of
the full context.

I kept observing people barging into the ongoing conversation and
attempting to help you without a clear grasp of what you were doing and
why, so it's not even a tiny bit surprising that these interactions
didn't bear fruitful results.

Michael Paoli is certainly correct in his 'Hey, if you can't make it
work with VirtualBox, you might be able to do it with KVM' (paraphrased)
observation, and I mean absolutely no criticism in saying this, but that 
distracts from the question of why on God's green earth VirtualBox
doesn't run just fine.  

>    - I ran the VMware program to make the vmdk file and copied it to a
>    big USB SSD   
> 
>    - Next I installed a new hard drive in the laptop.

...and set aside the preload's hard drive.  This was exceptionally wise,
as it guarantees that you will not be burning your bridges, no matter
what else occurs.

>    - And installed Debian Testing onto the laptop.
>    - There is a big partition with a copy of the vmdk file.
>    - I made some attempts to run VirtualBox, but have not successful.

And this is where we are.  If I understand correctly, we've actually
been here for quite some time, but nobody's addressed whatever the
problem is.

>    - Others have suggested KVM and possibly others.    
> 
> 
> Details:   
>    - The boot ROM, under Legacy boot has from network before hard
>      drive.  I have not found a way to change this and have been needing
>      to push F12 and select hard drive every time I start the computer.

Wow, that's... lame.

I'm guessing you're using Legacy Boot rather that (I guess) UEFI Mode boot 
because that seemed the easiest way to do Debian?  Understandable.  For
now, tuck into your bag of tricks for the future that that is _not_ the
only way.  You can do UEFI Boot with Debian 9 'Testing', _provided_ that
UEFI Secure Boot isn't required.  https://wiki.debian.org/UEFI

There _is_ (via a couple of separate methods) support for doing UEFI
Secure Boot in Linux, and packaging one of the methods (the Microsoft
shim) in Debian is in process:  https://wiki.debian.org/SecureBoot
(I love the 'Sacrifice goats' step listed.)

>    - Linux is missing some file related to wireless, maybe Bluetooth.

Firmware BLOB.  This is extremely, extremely common.  And inevitably the
root cause of the problem is that some yoyo at Broadcom or Marvell has
his/her head so far up his/her ass as to be unwilling to write a small
memo permitting free distribution of the firmware BLOB file.  Welcome to
Linux in the 2010s.  Your wireless and/or Bluetooth will work just as
soon as you've fetched and retrofitted the BLOB file.

1.  Use lspci to find the chipset in question.
2.  Web-search that chipset ID plus 'Debian' (or failing that, 'Linux').
3.  Do what you find.  If you find multiple sets of conflicting
    instructions (because, Internet), then use basic moron-detection
    to weed out the bad advise.

There are a number of firmware* (etc.) packages in the nonfree collection.
For policy reasons, the default Debian installer image doesn't include
nonfree packages.  Ergo, unless you anticipate this problem (which you
didn't) and fetch in advance the correct firmware package and feed it to
the running installer separately (say, off a USB key), you end up with a
wireless and/or Bluetooth driver that is not yet functional for lack of
the required firmware BLOB file under /lib/firmware.  (To be clear, you 
will not be painfully flailing around manually under /lib/firmware.  You
will end up installing a .deb that takes care of all the details for
you.)

One omnibus (but not exhaustive) collection of firmware BLOBs is package
firmware-linux-nonfree.  (The Debian default installer image gets you
package firmware-linux, but not firmware-linux-non-free.)  There are
also a number of other packages.

https://wiki.debian.org/Firmware

At this point, I cannot give you more precise information, because I
don't have the answer to step 1 (above), 'Use lspci to find the chipset
in question.'  

Hey, Paul!  Use lspci to find the chipset in question.  ;->

The https://wiki.debian.org/Firmware page told me something I didn't
know until now:  'there are now versions of the "netinst" CD images that
also include all the non-free firmware packages directly - see
http://cdimage.debian.org/cdimage/unofficial/non-free/cd-including-firmware/'


Your larger problem is the "¡VirtualBox no funciona!' one -- but, again,
I cannot currently help you because you haven't described the symptom.


-- 
Cheers,                                       A woman's place is in the House,
Rick Moen                                     the Senate, and the White House.
rick at linuxmafia.com 
McQ! (4x80)