1 Topic by Mesh Malachi (edited by Mesh Malachi 2020-01-28 19:47:46)

  • Mesh Malachi
  • Guest

Topic: Possible to install or migrate over wifi?

tl;dr, it seems impossible to install Hyperbola without Ethernet. Is there a way?

Complimentary wifi (I have no home Internet) is the only Internet access I have. I'm trying to install on a Lenovo Thinkpad X131e. I wasn't able to install Hyperbola from the live image because installation requires an Internet connection. My wifi card isn't even detected by Hyperbola (ip link show shows only the Ethernet card and loopback).

I found open source firmware for the wifi card on github, but I couldn't install it from within the live image environment because that also requires Internet access. Most of the places where I can get wifi require me to accept a terms of service agreement by clicking a button, so I can't connect from a console even if I do have the firmware for the card.

I've just tried to migrate from another Arch-based distro (Archbang), but Hyperbola's migration instructions involve booting the live image again (presumably I can't migrate from within Archbang).

I tried to migrate from Parabola (OpenRC) to Hyperbola, but I can't even get Parabola installed. I can't access the Internet from the console-based Parabola live image, and I don't have a USB with enough space to burn the desktop-based OpenRC Parabola live image. Yes I can buy another USB drive, but I'd like to know if I have other options. And I could use the systemd Parabola, but migrating to OpenRC is a nightmare.

I tried dd'ing the desktop-based Parabola live image to a spare partition, but I can't figure out how to boot that partition. I did format it and set the boot flag on it with cfdisk before burning the live image to it. I booted a live usb, but the partition Parabola was on didn't show up in the grub menu (although my Windows partition did).

Oddly enough, a few times I booted the console-based Parabola live usb, the desktop-based Parabola live image on my hard disk spontaneously booted instead, but I couldn't use the GUI tools to access the Internet; I got errors about root being unable to access the browser in a "regular user session," and the network management tool wouldn't connect.

I also twice tried migrating from Archbang to Parabola (then to Hyperbola), but migrating to Parabola destroyed my ability to get into a GUI environment both times. Lots of weird errors about my video driver that I could never solve. So I was back to console-only and no Internet access. It seems that I have a relatively new wifi card, so that may be the problem. I have Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. [AMD/ATI] Wrestler [Radeon HD 6310]

What else could I try? If I did manage to migrate to Hyperbola, would it try to delete the firmware for my wifi card?

2 Reply by outtasight (edited by outtasight 2020-02-05 04:08:14)

  • outtasight
  • Guest

Re: Possible to install or migrate over wifi?

To be terse, there is a few solutions I can think of. Perhaps the
easiest is the offline install trick I performed for ArchLabs, as
described in the ArchWiki:

https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Of … stallation

So there is that. As for WiFi, at one point I was using an Android
device to connect to WiFi, and subsequently tether that to my
machine. On some people's GNU instalations, I had to procure WiFi
drivers (or whatever the files in question technically are) from a
GNU system in which WiFi was known to work with the hardware.

3 Reply by felicien

  • felicien
  • Guest

Re: Possible to install or migrate over wifi?

Mesh Malachi wrote:

I found open source firmware for the wifi card on github, but I couldn't install it from within the live image environment because that also requires Internet access. Most of the places where I can get wifi require me to accept a terms of service agreement by clicking a button, so I can't connect from a console even if I do have the firmware for the card.

You could copy the source files on a spare USB drive, then plug it on your live environment and mount it to access this firmware and finally install it.

I tried dd'ing the desktop-based Parabola live image to a spare partition, but I can't figure out how to boot that partition. I did format it and set the boot flag on it with cfdisk before burning the live image to it. I booted a live usb, but the partition Parabola was on didn't show up in the grub menu (although my Windows partition did).

Why don't you try burning it on an USB stick or CD-ROM? I don't think live images are supposed to be installed on hard drive partitions, and even you would have to update GRUB config to make it visible from your boot menu.

What else could I try? If I did manage to migrate to Hyperbola, would it try to delete the firmware for my wifi card?

No it won't, unless the package which contains your firmware is blacklisted.

One other thing you could do is getting an external Wi-Fi dongle, as explained here.