Cautiously optimistic about wifi

I think I got it.  I got a switch and connected the ethernet cable, giving me Internet access from the BBB.  I then upgraded the kernel to

Linux version 3.8.13-bone71 (root@a3-imx6q-wandboard-2gb) (gcc version 4.6.3 (Debian 4.6.3-14) ) #1 SMP Tue Mar 17 18:07:44 UTC 2015

This seems to have given wifi a lot more stability.  Lots of steady pings from my Ubuntu VM and good bandwidth readings from iperf (pulled the eth0 connection just to make sure).

Of course I got better performance from the wired eth0:

For reference, here's /etc/network/interfaces:

And wicd-curses:

Wifi not so hot

Although wifi works, it drops out after a minute or two.  Running continuous ping from the linux vm, you get Destination Host Unreachable but periodically the pings go through.

BeagleBone Black

Got my BeagleBone Black a couple of days ago, messed around and didn't blog about what I was doing with it.  So far I have it plugged into the PC and set up putty on it.  Just exploring pretty much for now, I determined that it did have a version of Debian installed in the onboard 4GB MMC.  I had also ordered a 4GB SD Card that I don't really need, but now I have a nice 8GB of storage.

The most difficult trick was getting the WiFi dongle to work.  The rtl8192cu was already installed as was wpa_supplicant.  What worked for me:

/etc/network/interfaces:
allow-hotplug wlan0
iface wlan0 inet dhcp
    wpa-driver wext
    wpa-conf /etc/wpa_supplicant/wpa_supplicant.conf

/etc/wpa_supplicant/wpa_supplicant.conf:

ctrl_interface=/var/run/wpa_supplicant

# WPA Network

network={

    ssid="oakridge"

    psk="my_password_here"

}