Getting my wifi working on a new bare bones Debian install

Here’s a quick way to get connected to your wireless network. Note, your router will have to have dhcp enabled. This won’t work for other networks — you’ll need a network manager for that.

Login as su and edit

nano /etc/network/interfaces

At the end of the file, add this

auto wlan0
iface wlan0 inet dhcp
        wpa-ssid the_ssid_name_of_your_network
        wpa-psk your_network_password

As this file now contains your network password, make sure only root can access it.

chmod 600 /etc/network/interfaces

Reboot for changes to take effect.