On Sun, Jul 01, 2018 at 07:30:30AM -0400, Haines Brown wrote:
> Stefan, sorry to be dense.

With the help of ThinkPenguin I finally resolved the problem and wlan0
is now my interface name, not wlx<mac address>. In any case, simply
modifying /etc/network/interfaces to use that address didn't work (I
replaced all instances of wlan0 with wlx<my dongle mac address>, but I
might have gone too far).

Because my online search failed to come up with the solution, it may be
useful to describe it here. I simplify by leaving out references to
NetworkManager (if present it should be stopped) and for setting up a
static IP address. The full directions are at:
www.thinkpenguin.com/gnu-linux/how-configure-wifi-card-using-command-line-or-terminal
With ascii I had to modify one step a bit.

The following assumes that wpasupplicant and wireless-tools have been
installed, and also the appropriate driver for the wireless card or
dongle is accessible. It assumes that /etc/resolv.conf points to the
name server, which in my case is my router's IP address. It also assumes
there is only one wireless interface.

1. Create (or replace) a wpa_supplicant.conf file:

# wpa_passphrase "<the AP SSID>" <wireless passphrase> > /etc/wpa_supplicant.conf

2. Replace the wireless stanza in /etc/network/interfaces with:

  auto wlan0
  iface wlan0 inet dhcp
    wpa-driver nl80211
    wpa-conf /etc/wpa_supplicant.conf

The value of the driver is extracted from iwconfig line: IEEE
802.11bgn

3. Activate the connection

# ifconfig wlan0 up

# ping -c 5 google.com

My ifconfig now shows wlan0 to be UP and RUNNING. My only open question
is that DHCP has assigned an IP address different than before. I've not
checked to see if it differs from the old ethernet IP address as well.

Haines