Re: Install-time non-free issues

on / and on /firmware/ of both an SD card and a USB stick. I've
extracted the files and placed the loose files it calls for by name
(rtl_nic/etc) in both / and /firmware on both the SD card and USB
stick.

In short, I've followed with the documentation says to do, yet the
installer does not seem to "find" the files.

Which documentation is that.

http://www.debian.org/releases/wheezy/i386/ch06s04.html.en

I've switched to tty2 (Ctrl-Alt-F2) and activated it, and created
/mnt/sdcard and /mnt/usb and mounted both filesystems, and verified
that the firmware exists in both places on both devices. The
installer can't seem to "find" it even with them manually mounted.

Is there some other place the installer is looking? there appears to
be no way to specify a mountpoint or location to find these files.

Anyone got a clue? I'm tapped out..

Thanks!

It reads like you are using not using the non-free-firmware version of
the installer *and* you are trying to add the firmware-linux-free-*.deb
to the installation process - if that's the case skip to the last two
paragraphs.

I made a CD from http://cdimage.debian.org/debian-cd/7.3.0/amd64/iso-cd/debian-7.3.0-amd64-netinst.iso

I booted my EeeBox. At some point the installer said : "

[!] Detect Network hardware

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: rtl_nic/rtl8168e-2.fw

If you have such media available now, insert it, and continue.

Load missinfg firmware from removable media?

Based on this, I'm not seeing where I'd know that I'd need a special non-free version of the installer.

The above text, and the above linked-to debian document indicated to me that I should be able to put the firmware on some media, either in / or /firmware on said media, insert it, let the thing detect the insertion and do some auto-mount magic behind the scenes, find the files needed, and continue installing.

This didn't happen, obviously.

Is what you're suggesting using one of these "unofficial" install images specifically including non-free firmware?

http://cdimage.debian.org/cdimage/unofficial/non-free/cd-including-firmware/7.3.0/amd64/iso-cd/

If you've already installed Debian *and* down-loaded the non-free
firmware image but for some reason don't wish to use apt/aptitude:-
# dpkg -i $pathTo\firmware-linux-free-*.deb

(replace $pathTo with actual path to the package, you can leave the
wildcard in the debian package name)

If you've already installed Debian and you can use apt:-
# apt-get install firmware-linux-free

If you have *not* already installed Debian you need to use the files
from either the
*.tar.gz* or the *.zip* package. I'm not familiar with the process of
trying to manually extract the drivers from the .deb package.

Those packages are here:-
http://cdimage.debian.org/cdimage/unofficial/non-free/firmware/wheezy/current/
See 6.4.1. Preparing a medium:-
https://www.debian.org/releases/wheezy/i386/ch06s04.html.en