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edbarx

Member

Registered: 2016-12-01

Posts: 20  

Bypassing networking problems with the installer. A suggestion.

Currently, on DNG there is a discussion about networking difficulties encountered during Devuan's installation. The core of the problem, undoubtedly is the lack of support for the many different Wifi devices that are on the market. Anyone who has been using GNU/Linux for some years know that quite some Wifi manufacturers frown over GNU/Linux and are very reluctant to publish any data about their devices so that Linux developers can write appropriate drivers.

The intention of this post is to suggest a way to bring Devuan to those who are finding it difficult to install it. A solution among the many available is to provide a .tar.gz file containing a minimal installation as obtained by debootstrap. I would add some tweaks to it like adding a root account and basic wired (ethernet) networking. Such an archive would provide potential users to get hold of Devuan irrespective of whether an installer succeeds or not.

The procedure would be this:

1. Download the .tar.gz file and print the steps to get a working Devuan installation.

2. Boot the GPARTED Live CD.

3. Create a partition with a native Linux filesystem like ext3 and ext4.

4. Mount the newly created and formatted partition.

5. Extract the .tar.gz file in the new partition.

6. Chroot into the new partition.

7. Continue with the installation of a graphical environment and a bootloader.

8. Exit chroot and unmount the partition.

9. Reboot to test the new partition.

The advantage of this procedure is it follows the same steps a Windows user would take, as the commands to be executed while using  the GPARTED CD, can be automated in a shell script and even an executable. So, the procedure would reduce to download .tar.gz file and the installer executable, boot GPARTED CD, copy both files to /home, run executable and follow any instructions from the installer.

It is useless getting frustrated at the lack of cooperation from hardware manufacturers regarding Wifi support.

mckaygerhard

Member

Registered: 2017-04-21

Posts: 283  

Website

Re: Bypassing networking problems with the installer. A suggestion.

these steps seems more complicated and are seems its a guindows like procedure...

the real right solution its provide a firmware disc that's all.. too much complicated stupid guindow-like steps.. (like windo 98 when machiine do not have the "drivers")

Debian has a unnoficial special backports disc: the Kenshi muto b-i discs http://kmuto.jp/debian/d-i/ solves that problem in the nomadays for debian disc.. so then later debian start to provide network install flavours with firmware includeds.

of course the difference between Kenshi muto images and debian firmware images was that the K-M images has backported recents kernels for stable releases with firmware icluding and some hacks for wifis, the debian official firmware images only has the firmware packages including...

Last edited by mckaygerhard (2017-05-21 00:39:29)

fsmithred

Administrator

Registered: 2016-11-25

Posts: 2,486  

Re: Bypassing networking problems with the installer. A suggestion.

edbarx' post was a solution to a problem with the beta installer. That problem has been fixed. The devuan installation disks will now detect your wireless hardware and provide the correct firmware. The regular install does this automatically, and the expert install asks if you want the non-free firmware or not. The live images have the firmware pre-installed and provide a script to remove all the non-free packages.