Re: (solved) Re: wireless fail after stretch installation

[Jude DaShiell]

So, debian installer does not use wpa_passphrase on the wireless 
password as it is entered.  Had that been done no reason would exist to 
strip out connectivity files from the installation.


On Wed, 7 Mar 2018, Ian Jackson wrote:


Date: Wed, 7 Mar 2018 08:25:16
From: Ian Jackson 
To: bw 
Cc: debian-u...@lists.debian.org, debian-devel@lists.debian.org
Newsgroups: chiark.mail.debian.devel
Subject: Re: (solved) Re: wireless fail after stretch installation
Resent-Date: Wed,  7 Mar 2018 13:25:34 + (UTC)
Resent-From: debian-u...@lists.debian.org

bw writes ("Re: (solved) Re: wireless fail after stretch installation"):

On Tue, 6 Mar 2018, Brian wrote:

One user calls it a "sick joke". After five years and with no attempt
to rectify the situation, I'm beginning to have sympathy with that view.


Debian, like all ordinary software, is full of bugs.  Many bugs
languish unfixed for years.  This is not malice, or a "sick joke".
It's just that there is too much to do and too few people to do it.

There are rare cases where horrible people deliberately sabotage
things.  They are very high profile because they are so outrageous,
but they are not the norm.  I see no evidence in relation to this bug
that anyone is sabotaging anything.

The correct approach to this bug is to figure out how to fix it, and
send a patch.


Brute forcing this thing with wifi to /e/n/i might not be the best
approach?  What about people who want a different config than the
installer?  What about people who don;t want to be UP (auto) on bootup?
What about static configs?  Wifi is by nature a mobile environment, what
about security or several devices?  Let's help the devs by hashing out the
pros and cons and making a coherent proposal?


We are considering the situation where the user has installed a
barebones system, with no GUI network management tools.

Such a user will probably *expect* to edit a configuration file when
they want to change their network configuration, whether because their
needs change, or because their needs are different to those of the
majority of people.

Consequently, there is no problem in principle with setting up /e/n/i
to have the wifi configuration from the install.  That is what most
people who do this will want; and if it doesn't suit them, they can
change it.  (It is easier to change it or delete it, than it is to set
it up from scratch.)

AFAICT from reading #694068, the reason d-i currently strips this
information out of the installed system is because it contains the
wifi password in /e/n/i, a world-readable file.  That would obviously
be wrong.

Someone should implement and test the suggestion made by Trent Buck,
here,
 https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=694068#47

Specifically:

|  If you don't want to udebify wpa_passphrase, you can do it by hand:
|
|  cat >"/etc/wpa_supplicant/wpa_supplicant-$iface.conf" <

--

Re: Debian Installer Stretch Alpha 6 release

[Jude DaShiell]

Unless some compeling reason exists not to do it, could wireless-tools 
and iw get added to the isos?  I don't know why iwconfig continues to be 
on this type of debian when iw was supposed to have replaced it and is 
supposedly more harmonious with modern kernels.  I tried configuring my 
wifi connection to xfinity with iwconfig and wpa_supplicant and couldn't 
get it done post-install and suspect I need a few more tools and I'm 
doing this with command line.  If espeakup by default gets mate 
installed is orca also installed?


On Sat, 21 May 2016, Cyril Brulebois wrote:


Date: Sat, 21 May 2016 17:13:17
From: Cyril Brulebois 
Reply-To: debian-b...@lists.debian.org
To: debian-devel-annou...@lists.debian.org
Cc: debian-b...@lists.debian.org
Subject: Debian Installer Stretch Alpha 6 release

The Debian Installer team[1] is pleased to announce the sixth alpha
release of the installer for Debian 9 "Stretch".


Important changes in this release of the installer
==

* This release fixes the package installation issue which appeared
  lately with the previous alpha release (#814343).
* Debian Pure Blends can now be enabled directly from the Software
  selection screen. This might change in a later release though
  (#758116).


Improvements in this release


* brltty:
   - Install MATE desktop by default when brltty is used in d-i.
   - Disable auto-detection of Cebra, Albatross, and BrailleMemo
 devices in d-i, since they are rare and conflict with other
 devices (#782732).
   - prebaseconfig: Enable screen reader in KDE.
   - prebaseconfig: Support 4th bootline parameter.
   - brltty-udeb.udev.rules: Add new USB IDs.
* cdebconf:
   - gtk: Auto-scroll when switching between entries.
   - text: Print one screen worth of choices, and use +/- to switch
 between choices screens (#809739).
* debian-installer:
   - Bump linux kernel version from 4.3.0-1 to 4.5.0-2.
* espeakup:
   - Add support for multiboard systems: request the user to press
 enter at the right time to select a given board.
   - Improve language/voice lookup.
   - Install MATE desktop by default when espeakup is used in d-i.
* flash-kernel:
   - Avoid waiting for Ctrl-c when debconf is running (#791794).
* net-retriever:
   - Concentrate on SHA256 now, following archive-side changes.
* netcfg:
   - Improve behaviour when user-submitted input contains spaces
 (#818611).
   - Improve error checking in various places.
* network-console:
   - Improve support for multiple addresses (#816600).
* parted:
   - Fix problems with LVM and DASD devices (#814076).
* partman-auto:
   - Bump space requirements for a lot of recipes (#725642).
* partman-basicfilesystems:
   - Call mkfs.ext2 with -F to avoid hangs (#817174).
* partman-ext3:
   - Call mkfs.ext[34] with -F to avoid hangs (#767682).
* preseed:
   - Invert env-preseed and initrd-preseed so that the former
 overrides the latter (#805291).
   - url: correctly handle IPv6 addresses (#815166).
* rootskel:
   - Add GNU/screen support, when it's available.
* s390-zfcp:
   - New component to activate and configure FCP devices (#808041).
* wget:
   - Add udeb support, for later user.
* win32-loader:
   - Switch signature checking from MD5 to SHA256.
   - Improve support for new versions of Windows (#775055).


Hardware support changes


* debian-installer:
   - Provide u-boot images for OpenRD.
   - Use marvell flavour for orion5x and kirkwood.
   - Include mtd-modules in various images.
   - Generate image for Seagate Personal Cloud and Seagate NAS.
   - Improve armel/orion5x and armel/kirkwood for many different
 Buffalo Linkstation devices.
   - Add support for Firefly-RK3288.
   - Add support for BeagleBoard-X15.
   - ARM: sunxi: Add support for the Olimex A20-SOM-EVB.
   - Add sata-modules for arm64.
* grub-installer:
   - Install grub-xen when installing in a Xen PV guest.
* hw-detect:
   - Improve and split harddrive detection into DASD and SCSI
 dependency on s390x (#818586).
* libdebian-installer:
   - armel: Add various orion5x/kirkwood based Buffalo Linkstation
 devices supported by device-tree.
* linux:
   - [armhf] usb-modules: Add modules required for BeagleBoard-X15
 (#815848).
   - [mips*/octeon] udeb: Add ahci_octeon and ahci_platform modules
 to sata-modules.
   - [arm64] udeb: Add leds-modules package containing leds-gpio
 driver.
   - [arm64] udeb: Add regulators and SoC modules to core-modules.
   - [x86] udeb: Move scsi_transport_fc to scsi-core-modules, since
 hv_storvsc now depends on it.
   - [armhf] core-modules: Include regulator drivers by default.
   - mmc-modules: Include MMC controller drivers by default.
   - mmc-modules: Depends on usb-modules.
   - usb-modules: Include USB PHY drivers by default.
   - udeb: Combine scsi-{common,extra}-modules with scsi-modules.
   - udeb: Use wildcards to include entire classes