Package: firmware-amd-graphics
Version: 20230625-1
Severity: normal
Dear Maintainer,
*** Reporter, please consider answering these questions, where appropriate ***
* What led up to the situation?
A long time ago on a motherboard far away lived an AMD graphics card
code-named Cedar.
Cedar was missing its firmware so its owner copied the firmware to
/lib/firmware/radeon and all was well.
The graphics card was later moved to another pc (after Cedar firmware was
packaged), replaced by an R7 250
graphics card and all was well.
Later on the motherboard went to the great scrap metal recovery yard,
replaced by a motherboard with an AMD APU, and its graphics unit was
code-named Aruba and all was well.
Then, an early present arrived in the form of /usr merge for AMD graphics
firmware.
A small message said:
"unable to remove /lib/firmware/radeon - directory not empty"
and all was well until update-initramfs was run and a reboot.
For update-initramfs had found the old /lib/firmware/radeon and its Cedar
firmware, but stopped searching for /usr/lib/firmware/radeon, which
contained Aruba firmware.
Module radeon was loaded but Aruba firmware was not found, and no further
video output appeared. (The boot process continued but not all stages were
successful, preventing a remote shell into the machine).
* What exactly did you do (or not do) that was effective (or
ineffective)?
Finally solved by running a rescue DVD, checking the package update log,
and blacklisting the radeon module, then deleting /lib/firmware/radeon and
running update-initramfs -u - k all
* What was the outcome of this action?
Possible solutions: if dh_movetousr would result in both /lib/firmware/radeon
and /usr/lib/firmware/radeon, report this as an error rather than an
informational message, probably better here than in update-initramfs-tools.
Circumstances that lead to problems:
1. Manually adding a missing firmware file,
2. Changing graphics card,
3. /usr merge leaving manually added firmware behind, with just an
informational message rather than an error
4. update-initramfs searching for old or new firmware locations but only
loading the first location (old) if both exist
5. radeon module ceasing video output (and possible further problems) if no
firmware found
6. Forgetting how to blacklist a module from grub.
* What outcome did you expect instead?
*** End of the template - remove these template lines ***
-- System Information:
Debian Release: trixie/sid
APT prefers experimental
APT policy: (1, 'experimental')
merged-usr: no
Architecture: amd64 (x86_64)
Kernel: Linux 6.7.0-rc3+ (SMP w/4 CPU threads; PREEMPT)
Locale: LANG=en_AU.UTF-8, LC_CTYPE=en_AU.UTF-8 (charmap=UTF-8), LANGUAGE=en_GB
Shell: /bin/sh linked to /bin/dash
Init: sysvinit (via /sbin/init)
firmware-amd-graphics depends on no packages.
firmware-amd-graphics recommends no packages.
Versions of packages firmware-amd-graphics suggests:
ii initramfs-tools 0.142
-- no debconf information
