[sf-lug] debian base system (initially without X11) install progress (or lack there of!) report

[Rick Moen]

Quoting Alex Kleider (akleider at sonic.net):

> Drivers (wifi) demanded by the installer are 5 in number
>    iwlwifi-5000-1.ucode,
>    iwlwifi-5000-2.ucode,
>    iwlwifi-5000-3.ucode,
>    iwlwifi-5000-4.ucode,
>    iwlwifi-5000-5.ucode,
> but only the second and fifth exist for download from the net.

https://www.reddit.com/r/debian/comments/1wdd4d/debian_wireless_driver_firmware_help_after_install/

The default Official Debian installer does _not_ include proprietary
firmware BLOBs (binary large objects) needed to initialise some
hardware, notably some wireless chips -- because of a Debian Project
policy against including packages from the 'non-free' collection in the
default installer ISOs.

That is of course a rather annoying policy if you want your wireless
(such as your Intel Wireless chip) to Just Work without needing to chase
down a non-free firmware BLOB .deb file and do 'dpkg -i something.deb'
to properly place its constituent files into the correct
places/filenames under /lib/firmware.  One way around this annoyance is
to use these unofficial ISOs instead, which are exactly the same as the
official ones except (Doh!) it adds non-free firmware packages:

http://cdimage.debian.org/cdimage/unofficial/non-free/cd-including-firmware/

It appears that non-free package 'firmware-iwlwifi' provides
iwlwifi-5000-2.ucode and iwlwifi-5000-5.ucode .  Possibly, doing
'apt-get install firmware-iwlwifi' will suffice.  I really have no
present idea why the installer asked for all five of those files -- but
maybe give 'apt-get install firmware-iwlwifi' a try?

Looks like this bug asks that exact question (about the other three):
https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=767064

  When installing Debian Edu Jessie on a Thinkpad X200, we provide all the
  firmware debs available from ftp.debian.org in /firmware/ on the ISO.
  Yet a question show up asking for more firmware, as the files
  iwlwifi-5000-1.ucode, iwlwifi-5000-3.ucode and iwlwifi-5000-4.ucode are
  missing.

Answer provided by package maintainer Ben Hutchings was:

  The second number in the filename is the API version and the driver
  usually supports a range of different versions.  It will request the
  highest version it supports; then if that fails it will sequentially
  request earlier versions.

  I try to include only the highest version that stable, testing and
  unstable kernels will request.  There is no need to add any others.

Aha, there you go.  You actually don't need all five.

> Can't find anywhere on the Debian site where to put or install them
> after the fact: i.e. none of the following directories exist.
>     /lib/firmware
>     /usr/local/lib/firmware
>     /usr/lib/hotplug/firmware

Directory /lib/firmware will automatically get created if you install a
firmware package.  /usr/local/lib/firmware would be a
sysadmin-maintained directory, that will exist only if _you_ create it.

/usr/lib/hotplug/firmware ?  Um, ISTR that this is, again, an
automatically created and managed place that will get created if
installed packaged software needs it.

> No man pages exist on the system!
> "Unable to locate package" is the response I get to all of the
> following:
> apt install iw
> apt install man-db
> apt install manpages

So, have you fetched the package catalogues, yet?

# apt-get update

Until there's an initial catalogue, you indeed cannot find any packages,
because the system hasn't yet been told about any.

Edited to add:  Near the bottom of your post, you say that you did run
'apt-get update' but didn't say what happened in result of doing so.
Like, for example, if that command timed out because, say, there's no
networking, ergo host ftp.us.debian.org cannot be contacted to fetch the
initial package catalogue, that would explain things.

That might happen if, say, this machine would be using a wireless
connection to reach the Internet, and either it doesn't have a wired
(RJ-45 jack) ethernet port at all, or it hadn't yet occurred to you to
temporarily connect it using an ethernet cable in order to fetch the
missing firmware blob .deb.


> ifconfig command not found
> although "iproute2 is already the newest version"
> It seems ifconfig has been deprecated/eliminated in favor of
> ip a

Yes, if you want to be an old fogie and stick with ifconfig, ipmaddr,
iptunnel, mii-tool, nameif, plipconfig, rarp, route, alattach, and arp,
they're in package net-tools, but it's true that the entire net-tools
suite has been deprecated in favour of the iproute2 suite for quite a
long time.

Explained here:  https://lwn.net/Articles/710533/


> Perhaps instead of beginning with a base (command line only) system
> and working my way up, I should start with an Xfce installation.

Nah.

I'm thinking you're just needing to learn the lay of the land, and then
you'll be fine.  Might be that you're basically just stuck at 'I don't
have network connectivity on account of the missing firmware BLOB, so I
can't do much else, yet.'