[GTALUG] DSL to wifi

Tue Aug 4 06:36:05 EDT 2020

On Mon, Aug 3, 2020 at 11:14 PM Astrid R <afjmj at protonmail.com> wrote:

> Thanks, I'll keep this information handy.  The password I lost is to
> 'authenticate' to allow certain changes once logged in.
>

Since you appear to be setup to bypass authentication and log into your
user account directly without a password, this would probably be your login
password. Different users have different access depending on which groups
they belong to. Since keeping a terminal logged into root is considered a
security hazard, the average user is limited in the changes they are able
to effect on a system. Root is the superuser, with all powers, others
belong to the sudo (Super User Do Only) group, traditionally called the
wheel and that user is masked according to needs, which the root user has
determined at system setup.

When I open the terminal app and type groups I get ...

[R3eiter at archon ~]$ groups
R3eiter wheel

[R3eiter at archon ~]$ sudo -i
[sudo] password for R3eiter:
[root at archon ~]#

The command is sudo; the -i is a condition which keeps me from having to
type sudo each time I issue a command from the wheel group, which I belong
to. This command drops me into a root shell.  Typically once sudo is
issued, the shell which is opened should retain the sudo condition during
that terminal session depending on the timeouts. ie. if you don't issue a
command within a certain time, the sudo condition is terminated.

-i is not recommended, I only use that as an example to show how the prompt
changes to indicate the conditions the shell is running under.

https://wiki.debian.org/sudo/

If you can open a terminal app you can type

lspci | grep Wireless

to see if you are wheel enough to find out what wireless network hardware
you are using.

R3eiter at archon ~]$ lspci |grep Wireless
74:00.0 Network controller: Intel Corporation Wireless 8260 (rev 3a)

lspci is a command which lists all the hardware reported to be on the PCI
hardware bus / list
the | figure is the key just above the carriage return key called the pipe
command
grep is a command which stands for generate regular expression, which is a
way to match characters which appear in text strings. So basically the
command lspci is piped through a text filter which only returns the lines
with the word wireless in them.

I live close to Ossington and Queen, however I live in a high risk building
in a high risk area and am strictly socially distancing for the duration.
However if you can open a terminal and type a few commands you can probably
get more help from the list members. I don't even remember what the
graphical nm-app looks like on the Debian desktop, so I'm not much help
there.

If you don't remember your login password, any password recovery is going
to start right at the boot sequence. It is somewhat complex, but not all
that difficult, once you get the hang of working in terminal mode.

I can't remember if the Debian recovery kernel image resets everything,
including user passwords or not.

> Attivato lun, ago 3, 2020 alle 20:27, Russell Reiter <rreiter91 at gmail.com>
> ha scritto:
>
>
>
> On Mon, Aug 3, 2020 at 5:08 PM Astrid R via talk <talk at gtalug.org> wrote:
>
>> Thanks.  Here's a short video that shows what happens when I turn on the
>> laptop. I hope it's clear enough to be helpful.
>>
>> https://www.dropbox.com/s/zsss7a5pnu0emwu/IMG_1210.MOV?dl=0
>>
>
> Got some info from that. You are running Debian release Wheezy. Boot seems
> normal, directly to your user, without a login manager in between and the
> Network Manager icon is in the system tray, right beside your name Astrid
> Rammo. You appear to be running the Gnome desktop.
>
> When you say you forgot your password, do you mean your user login
> password. Automation in graphical logins kind of does that to you. As a
> user you can edit the grub boot lines for either the regular kernel and
> invoke a root shell, or the recovery kernel in order to boot into a setup
> menu and set whatever login passwords you need to.
>
> https://askubuntu.com/questions/92556/how-do-i-boot-into-a-root-shell
>
> There is a link with some wifi setup info here, but if you are not
> comfortable with using shell commands, this information is not going to be
> much help.
>
> I haven't touched wheezy for a few years now so I don't remember exactly
> how to navigate through network management.
>
> Maybe someone currently using Debian could help you walk through this.
>
> https://wiki.debian.org/WiFi/HowToUse
>
>
>>
>>
>> Attivato lun, ago 3, 2020 alle 16:55, Howard Gibson <hgibson at eol.ca> ha
>> scritto:
>>
>> On Mon, 03 Aug 2020 20:43:40 +0000
>> Astrid R via talk <talk at gtalug.org> wrote:
>>
>> > Thanks for your replies. Before I go on I should say I discovered that
>> I no longer have the password to change the date and time, so it might not
>> be possible to change anything else either.
>> >
>> > But in case there might be a way, I hope the following is useful.
>> >
>> > I'm using a Dell laptop.
>> >
>> > Not sure if this is the distribution and release...GNU Grub 1.99-27
>> +deb 7u2...
>>
>> Astrid,
>>
>> When your GNI login window comes up, does it say Debian, or Ubuntu?
>> Next to the username and password box, you should see a menu that
>> selects your desktop. If you pull this down, you should see Gnome,
>> Unity, XFCE, LXDM, or possibly FVWM. I, and a bunch of other people
>> here, love FVWM, but I highly do not recommend it for beginners.
>>
>> When you log into Gnome or Unity, you pull the menu down at the top
>> right-hand side of your screen, and networking is one of the options.
>> You need to know what your wireless device is called, and you need the
>> password.
>>
>> --
>> Howard Gibson
>> hgibson at eol.ca
>> jhowardgibson at gmail.com
>> http://home.eol.ca/~hgibson
>>
>>
>>
>> ---
>> Post to this mailing list talk at gtalug.org
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>>
>
>
> --
> Russell
>
>
>
>

-- 
Russell
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