Bug#1109988: debian-installer: installer fails to ask for info to authenticate to wifi, fails to connect to network
Source: debian-installer
Version: 20250701
Severity: normal
I recently installed Debian Trixie on a brand new computer I built out
myself. Intel Core Ultra 7 265K CPU, MSI Pro B60M A WF motherboard.
The installer told me that it needed additional firmware files to be
able to use my WiFi adapter:
Some of your hardware needs non-free firmware files to operate. The
firmware can be loaded from removable media, such as a USB stick or
floppy.
The missing firmware files are: iwlwifi-gl-c0-fm-c0-93.ucode
If you have such media available now, inset it, and continue.
Load missing firmware from removable media?
I found that file online, put it on a thumb drive with VFAT
formatting, stuck it in a USB port, and replied yes to the above
prompt. The installer proceeded without prompting me again for the
firmware, so I assume that it found the needed file on the thumb drive
and loaded the firmware successfully.
However, after that, _it did not prompt me for which WiFi network to
use or for the password for that network_. It just went into
"Detecting Link", which failed, then asked me which interface it
should use as the primary. I told it to use the WiFi interface, which
it again tried unsuccessfully to detect link on (since it never
prompted me for the WiFi network info!), then tried to use DHCP to
connect which also failed, then told me that it couldn't connect to
the network and offered to let me proceed with the install without a
network connection.
Note that when I boot from a Debian Trixie live image straight into
GNOME running from the thumb drive, I _am_ able to connect to the WiFi
network by opening the GNOME menu from the top right corner of the
screen and clicking on WiFi. So Trixie _is_ capable of connecting to
my WiFi using the controller in my new computer; it's just that the
installer isn't.
(Note, the above occurred with both the graphical and text installer.)
-- System Information:
Debian Release: 13.0
APT prefers testing-security
APT policy: (500, 'testing-security'), (500, 'stable-updates'), (500, 'stable-security'), (500, 'testing'), (500, 'stable'), (1, 'experimental')
Architecture: amd64 (x86_64)
Kernel: Linux 6.12.38+deb13-amd64 (SMP w/20 CPU threads; PREEMPT)
Kernel taint flags: TAINT_OOT_MODULE, TAINT_UNSIGNED_MODULE
Locale: LANG=en_US.UTF-8, LC_CTYPE=en_US.UTF-8 (charmap=UTF-8), LANGUAGE not set
Shell: /bin/sh linked to /usr/bin/dash
Init: systemd (via /run/systemd/system)
LSM: AppArmor: enabled
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