stevedoria.net

I recently installed Lubuntu 13.10 to continue running updated versions of Ubuntu on my Dell Inspiron Mini 9. My Mini 9 was delivered with Hardy Heron (Ubuntu 8.04 LTS), and it will bother me to have installed a different flavor of Linux.

The procedure that I describe requires an existing Ubuntu installation and wired ethernet connection for the Mini 9.

I was unable to install current versions of Ubuntu, because of my netbook’s restricted amount of disk space. With the “Lubuntu Minimal Installation” option, I have no swap partition, a 128MB boot partition and an encrypted root partition with 1.8GB used space and 1.6GB free space after installation.

To ease updating, I downloaded the linux and initrd.gz netboot installer binaries and copied them to /boot/13_10. After rebooting, I entered the following into the Grub command line:

grub> root=(hd0,msdos1)
grub> linux /13_10/linux
grub> initrd /13_10/initrd.gz
grub> boot

There were complications with configuring the wireless adapter. The wireless adapter drivers are not installed automatically, and my wireless access point has a hidden SSID.

The wireless adapter drivers were installed with:

sudo apt-get install \
  b43-fwcutter \
  firmware-b43-installer \
  wpagui

The /etc/network/interfaces file was updated to:

auto lo
iface lo inet loopback

#auto eth0
iface eth0 inet dhcp

iface wlan0 inet manual
  wpa-roam /etc/wpa_supplicant.conf

A /etc/wpa_supplicant.conf file was created with:

ctrl_interface=DIR=/var/run/wpa_supplicant GROUP=netdev
update_config=0
filter_ssids=0

network={
  ssid="MyHiddenSSID"
  scan_ssid=1
  psk="MyPassphrase"
  key_mgmt=WPA-PSK
}

network={
  key_mgmt=NONE
  disabled=0
}

After the above is performed, the computer is rebooted and the wired ethernet cable is removed. The wireless connection is enabled with the following:

ifup wlan0
dhclient wlan0

wpa_gui can be used for a graphical interface to the wpa_supplicant. Changes to wpa_supplicant.conf by wpa_gui is prevented by the update_config flag being set to 0. This is preferred to prevent losing my network’s configuration and polluting the network configuration file with several networks.

I installed Firefox. Now, the Mini 9 is running great!

This entry was posted on Saturday, January 11th, 2014 at 9:51 am and is filed under Linux / Unix. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.