On Tue, Dec 05, 2017 at 08:04:47AM +0100, Jonas Meurer wrote:
Am 05.12.2017 um 05:34 schrieb Paul Wise:
On Tue, Dec 5, 2017 at 12:34 AM, Jonathan Dowland wrote:
Yes, I've never managed to get d-i to find firmware I've put on a USB
myself, and always resorted to this approach. I never got around to
reading the source to figure out where it expects to look (nor to
improve the docs etc.)
The docs say to dump firmware files or packages on a USB stick:
https://www.debian.org/releases/stable/amd64/ch06s04.html.en
To prepare a USB stick (or other medium like a hard drive partition,
or floppy disk), the firmware files or packages must be placed in
either the root directory or a directory named /firmware of the file
system on the medium. The recommended file system to use is FAT as
that is most certain to be supported during the early stages of the
installation.
Last time I tried, neither of those worked. But I was too busy back then
to further investigate or report a bug and went with the full non-free iso.
Leaving aside whether the mechanism works at all, take a look at the
rest of the documentation and ponder what a new user should make of it.
(For example, if he follows the directions, is he getting "loose
firmware files" or a "firmware package"? Will his system get updated?
How does he figure out the difference? And what the heck is a kernel?)
Anyway, try to read the following with your "new naive user" hat on:
debian-installer only prompts for firmware needed by kernel modules
loaded during the installation. Not all drivers are included in
debian-installer, in particular radeon is not, so this implies that the
capabilities of some devices may be no different at the end of the
installation from what they were at the beginning. Consequently, some of
your hardware may not be being used to its full potential. If you
suspect this is the case, or are just curious, it is not a bad idea to
check the output of the dmesg command on the newly booted system and
search for “firmware”.
...
Any firmware loaded during the installation will be copied
automatically to the installed system. In most cases this will ensure
that the device that requires the firmware will also work correctly
after the system is rebooted into the installed system. However, if the
installed system runs a different kernel version from the installer
there is a slight chance that the firmware cannot be loaded due to
version skew.
If the firmware was loaded from a firmware package, debian-installer
will also install this package for the installed system and will
automatically add the non-free section of the package archive in APT's
sources.list. This has the advantage that the firmware should be updated
automatically if a new version becomes available.
If loading the firmware was skipped during the installation, the
relevant device will probably not work with the installed system until
the firmware (package) is installed manually.
Note
If the firmware was loaded from loose firmware files, the firmware
copied to the installed system will not be automatically updated unless
the corresponding firmware package (if available) is installed after the
installation is completed.
