[solved] Re: Please help with - it seems - no WiFi interface at all

[Rodolfo Medina <rodolfo.medina@gmail.com>]

David Wright <deblis@lionunicorn.co.uk> writes:

> Quoting Rodolfo Medina (rodolfo.medina@gmail.com):
>> The WiFi hardware on my machine should be Intel PRO/Wireless 2200BG, but it
>> is probably dead, because installing firmware-ipw2x00 had no effect.  But I
>> have some other WiFi hardware, that I bought yesterday and that's detected -
>> so it seems - on wlan0 after installing firmware-realtek: it is a
>> wireless-USB adaptor, the TL-WN725N.  I've been googling to search a proper
>> driver for it, but the matter looks to be hard issue.
>
> Hard in what way? I see drivers at
> http://www.tp-link.com/en/download/TL-WN725N_V2.html#Driver
> (for version 2), but I've no idea if either works.

It is said to be for Windows.


>> I also found:
>> 
>>  https://lists.debian.org/debian-kernel/2013/10/msg0
>
> Is the end of this url missing?

Sorry, my copy-paste mistake.  Now I can't find it any more.

But now it seems to work.  I tried what suggested by some listers, to use the
Debian installation CD to see if my WiFi usb device was detected and could
reach the net, but the network configuration failed, maybe also because I
didn't know what DHCP hostname to put there.  But then I tried again to
navigate in the web and...  it worked!  Short before I had plugged the device
into another pc, maybe this?  Or that yesterday late evening, before going to
bed, I full-upgraded my Debian Sid?  Or maybe it was already working yesterday
early evening, after last editing /etc/network/interfaces, when I noticed that
www.google.com could open up but thought it still didn't work because any other
web page couldn't open and so google page was in some way left in buffer
memory?  I'm reporting what I essentially did.  I don't have Gnome on this
machine, so all the tools I used were command-line.  I'll be studying for a
better fine tuning wifi-command-line set.

I did:

 # aptitude install wireless-tools wpasupplicant

and, to have my TL-WN725N USB-WiFi adapter work,

 # aptitude install firmware-realtek

; then,

 # ip a
 # iwconfig
 # ip link set wlan0 up
 # iwlist scan

, then put in /etc/network/interfaces the following stuff:

# my wifi device
auto wlan0
iface wlan0 inet dhcp
        wpa-ssid my-ssid
        wpa-psk my-password

, then rebooted.

Thanks,

Rodolfo