I have Installed Debian 11 while installing I got a message to install non-free drivers. I thought it would be installed when Installing the OS like Ubuntu. But it did not. So after the Installation I have reboot the system and ended up in message unable to load firmware rtl_nic
I have rebooted to Rescue mode and then I have logged as root. Below are the steps I have followed the below steps to install non-free drivers related to this error.
- Enable the Network Manager and connect to network
- Editing the package repo source for debian 11
- Installing the non-free drivers
Step : 1 Enable the Network Manager and connect to network
# nmcli
Error: NetworkManager is not running.
When trying to open Network Manager I was getting the above Error
After running the below commands the Network manager service is started and Enabled
- start it:
# systemctl start NetworkManager
2. make it auto-start on boot:
# systemctl enable NetworkManager
3. tell it to connect to a WiFi network
# nmcli device wifi list
4. Connecting to my Wifi Network shown from the above command, here my network is myWifiNetwork
# nmcli dev wifi connect myWifiNetwork password passin1234
Step : 2 Editing the package repo source for debian 11
Repository source will be in the directory /etc/apt/sources.list
I used nano editor to edit repo sources
# nano /etc/apt/sources.list
Enable the below 3 sources
deb http://deb.debian.org/debian bullseye main contrib non-free
deb http://deb.debian.org/debian-security/ bullseye-security main contrib non-free
deb http://deb.debian.org/debian bullseye-updates main contrib non-free
Step 3: Installing the non-free drivers
# apt update
# apt install linux-headers-$(uname -r)
# apt install firmware-linux firmware-realtek
Once the firmware is installed the reboot the system
# reboot
Now the system boots normally.
Sources : 1. https://pacesettergraam.wordpress.com/2018/12/31/error-networkmanager-is-not-running-arch-linux/