Bug#1029843: live-boot: Devices Requiring Firmware: multiple requested files in single line overlapping / special characters
Followup-For: Bug #1029843
X-Debbugs-Cc: a.dalm2807@googlemail.com, pete@akeo.ie, debian-boot@lists.debian.org
Control: reassign -1 hw-detect
Control: merge -1 1030519
Control: affects -1 raspi-firmware
Control: title -1 check-missing-firmware: patch for files with space characters, mediamount and more (with code)
Hi Alexander,
Thanks for these reports - I was attempting a netboot of the Bookworm RC 2
installer on a Raspberry Pi and ran into the same problem: hw-detect attempting
to load firmware files that contain spaces in the filename.
I've added Pete on cc - he noticed this issue too a few years ago, while
documenting how to install regular Debian 11 on a RPi.
Quoting some notes from his guide[1]:
> Also, if you did install the Wifi firmware blobs, you may find that you get the following error during boot:
...
> To fix that, simply rename /lib/firmware/brcm/brcmfmac43455-sdio.Raspberry to /lib/firmware/brcm/brcmfmac43455-sdio.Raspberry Pi Foundation-Raspberry Pi 4 Model B.txt.
Let's merge this with your linked bug #1030519 - I agree that the hw-detect
package seems to be the location of the relevant scripting[2]. Do you have an
account on Salsa[3] to offer fixes back to Debian git repositories?
I have some code review / comments about the patches, focusing only on the
filename problem to begin with:
Do we _need_ to retain the vendor name and model name in the firmware filename?
My guess (without being too familiar with the firmware loading process yet)
is that it'd be easier to ship a concisely-named file that omit the vendor and
model strings, so we'd want a way to map:
brcmfmac43455-sdio.Raspberry Pi Foundation-Raspberry Pi 4 Model B.txt
To the corresponding, already-packaged[4] filename:
brcmfmac43455-sdio.txt
...while preferably avoiding adding custom scripting for too many other
firmware filenames in future. Where does the long-format filename originate
from?
It seems unlikely that this should be fixed for Bookworm, but I can offer some
assistance with further testing, and hopefully we can improve this for Trixie.
And a nitpick: the way this appears in the hw-detect prompt screen in the
installer is a bit odd, because spaces in the filenames are replaced with
newlines. That might be nice to fix at the same time if we can.
Thanks,
James
[1] - https://forums.raspberrypi.com/viewtopic.php?t=282839
[2] - https://salsa.debian.org/installer-team/hw-detect/-/blob/f76d36b65aa14a14497f5ef57c9721f313ea98e6/check-missing-firmware.sh#L154-187
[3] - https://salsa.debian.org/
[4] - https://packages.debian.org/bookworm/all/raspi-firmware/filelist
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