#1 2021-08-22 11:56:33

Peregrino69

Member

Registered: 2016-03-11

Posts: 99

Installing USB WiFi adapter

I'm trying to connect an old 3Com WiFi adapter to use it with VM:s. Instructions are available around the inertwebs, for example https://null-byte.wonderhowto.com/forum … x-0324433/. However the only thing that happens is VB telling me "Failed to attach the USB device ATHER USB2.0 WLAN [0106] to virtual machine X".

My user is member of vboxusers group, and lsusb on the host shows the device:

Bus 001 Device 007: ID 0cf3:1010 Qualcomm Atheros Communications 3Com 3CRUSBN275 802.11abgn Wireless Adapter [Atheros AR9170]

... but I can't get it enabled even on the host. Driver is carl9170, in firmware-linux-free -package, of which version 3.4 is installed. Apt says "already newest". Also if I try to install it from backports.   

As per Debian Wiki https://wiki.debian.org/WiFi#USB_Devices "Your wireless network interface can be configured using a connection manager or Debian's network interface configuration file (/etc/network/interfaces)." But:

BunTor:~$ cat /etc/network/interfaces
# This file describes the network interfaces available on your system
# and how to activate them. For more information, see interfaces(5).

source /etc/network/interfaces.d/*

# The loopback network interface
auto lo
iface lo inet loopback
iface lo inet6 loopback

Even the internal WiFi which works fine isn't here. /etc/network/interfaces.d is empty.

So:

1. Where exactly do I find the configuration of my NICs?

2. How do I get the USB NIC usable in the host OS?

3. How do I get the USB NIC usable in the VB guests?