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I use my Pi in a headless setup , mainly using ssh. When plugged the usb wifi dongle , the have recognized it (how btw?) and wicd-curses enumerated all visible networks. however, when I choose a network my eth based connection of ssh shuts down. how can I do it without interfering the eth connection?

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  • This is perfectly doable, although I'm not sure how wicd works. I use wpa_supplicant and it works without extra configuration, by just plugging the wifi adapter or the ethernet cable
    – foibs
    Jan 8, 2014 at 11:40
  • No a power issue could cause the ethernet connection to drop. I would suggest this is likely the problem. You can diagnose this by following this guide elinux.org/R-Pi_Troubleshooting#Troubleshooting_power_problems. Feb 18, 2015 at 1:32

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The reason SSH stops working when you switch interfaces is because each one has a different IP. The SSH connection is active to the old IP each time, but because that interface is down it no longer works. If you configured both interfaces with a static IP address, it may get around the problem, but you'd have to ensure that both interfaces were never up at the same time or you'd loose access completely.

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If you are using Arch on your Pi, just run wifi-menu and choose yout network. On the other hand, if using Debian/Raspberry just use wpa-supplicant.

Be sure your problem is related to wice-curses and not to a power issue.

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  • Power issue would cause the Raspberry Pi to reset, right? Not just the ethernet to fail for a second or drop connections?
    – M. Mimpen
    Mar 12, 2014 at 11:03
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    @M.Mimpen no, actually it's more likely to cause Ethernet issues - the reason being that the Ethernet portion of the Pi runs off of 5v, whereas mostly everything else runs off of 3v3 - the 3v3 may still have a nice clean voltage at 3v3 even if the voltage drops slightly since there is a regulator which has 1.7v to work with normally, but will function with less - the Ethernet, however will suffer first. The other exceptions are usb devices, which while they typically run at 5v, many will work just fine at 3v3 as well (sometimes long/bad cables cause voltage sag on them). Apr 5, 2015 at 16:56

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