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How to enable wireless within Linux?

How do I enable my computer that is running on Debian Linux to find wireless networks?

  • I was at starbucks and tried to jump on the wifi. But did not see the network show up. On OSX, you would just see the available networks. this does not seem to be the case in Debian. Can someone just bullet point how to do this. My google searches just take me to ubuntu forums that do not address this well because the posts are outdated.

  • Answer:

    Open terminal and type sudo rfkill list #this will list the status of network devices sudo rfkill unblock all # this will enable all the network devices. Again check the status It should show something like this 0: brand-wlan: Wireless LAN     Soft blocked: no     Hard blocked: no 1: brand-bluetooth: Bluetooth     Soft blocked: no     Hard blocked: no 2: phy0: Wireless LAN     Soft blocked: no     Hard blocked: no You can individually block and unblock devices by giving device number (0, 1, 2 etc) or by name (wifi, wlan) e.g. sudo rfkill unblock 0 or sudo rfkill unblock wifi After enabling the wireless devices use the command sudo ifconfig to find networks. For more information check the manual of "rfkill" by command man rfkill. or search about rfkill on internet.

Kaushal Kumar at Quora Visit the source

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In debian, wireless networks is in a file and isn't an program so it'll be more different when you first setup the network. You can install network manager that's installed by default in Ubuntu or other GUI network interface. The wireless interface should be in the following path: /etc/network/interface, you'll need to input your information that's required to login: SSID, password.

Zhong Jiang

Your network manager should activate. check to make sure you have the proper drivers. https://wiki.debian.org/WiFi This not a Debian nor Linux issue. This an issue is problem due hardware manufacturers not having open drivers. That said there are tricks to using binary blobs as we call them if you need to.

Rod Young

What is the output from in terminal (dont copy the $ just the words) $ sudo ifconfig Do you see eth0, lo and wlan0? Wlan0 is your wireless interface. if it is missing run $ sudo ifconfig wlan0 up then run $ sudo ifconfig and see if wlan0 is there. if so check to see if network manager is working now.

Ian VonBon

If you can't resolve this problem by using all these answers then your wireless switch might be off.

Vaishali Patel

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