Saturday, 7 October 2017 - 6:42pm

Error message

  • Deprecated function: The each() function is deprecated. This message will be suppressed on further calls in _menu_load_objects() (line 579 of /var/www/drupal-7.x/includes/menu.inc).
  • Deprecated function: implode(): Passing glue string after array is deprecated. Swap the parameters in drupal_get_feeds() (line 394 of /var/www/drupal-7.x/includes/common.inc).
Published by Matthew Davidson on Sat, 07/10/2017 - 6:42pm in
sysadmin, aide-mémoire

I should never reboot my computer.

I am so out of touch that I didn't realise that a new version of Debian came out in June. "Splendid!", I thought. So:

# apt-get update
# apt-get dist-upgrade

… then off for a walk while two gigabytes downloaded (really must get rid of all those first-person shooters that are anyway far too violent for a gentleman of my advanced years).

Get through the upgrade, reboot the computer, and my USB WiFi dongle doesn't work. Here's how to diagnose/fix:

# lsusb
Bus 002 Device 002: ID 8087:8000 Intel Corp. 
[…]
Bus 003 Device 003: ID 045e:00cb Microsoft Corp. Basic Optical Mouse v2.0
Bus 003 Device 002: ID 413c:2003 Dell Computer Corp. Keyboard
Bus 003 Device 007: ID 0bda:8178 Realtek Semiconductor Corp. RTL8192CU 802.11n WLAN Adapter
[…]

Yes, I use a Microsoft mouse. Microsoft branded peripherals have generally been pretty darn good. I think this mouse is at least ten years old, and it's as good as the day I bought it. So now I know the WiFi chipset. I go to the Debian Wiki WiFi page, and find that I need the rtl8192cu driver, which is in the (non-free) firmware-realtek package, which is of course already installed because the blasted thing used to work. So now it's just a matter of:

# modprobe rtl8192cu

…and we're back in business. For good measure, I added rtl8192cu to the /etc/modules file, so that maybe I'll survive the next reboot unscathed. Not that I will be rebooting any time soon.