Package: debian-installer Severity: normal Today's daily netinst image was put on a USB stick together with a second partition to hold firmware. The intention was to test installing Debian over a WPA wireless connection. It turned out to be more interesting than I had anticipated! The wireless device is a SpeedTouch 121g Wireless USB Adapter, which uses the p54usb driver and requires firmware isl3887usb. This combination works well on a machine running Sid. 'set -x' was added to /bin/ethdetect and /bin/checking-missing-firmware after loading the installer components. 'Detect network hardware' went ok (there were no messages about missing firmware) and the next item in the menu was presented. Problem: there was no wlan0 interface offered. 'Configure the network' jumped straight to offering to set up a DHCP connection. The install can be continued with a wlan0 interface by reloading the p54usb module. Here are some excepts from the syslog, which is attached to this mail, The driver is loaded: Nov 13 12:51:53 kernel: [ 543.914487] usb 1-2: (p54usb) cannot load firmware isl3887usb (-2)! Nov 13 12:51:53 kernel: [ 543.923108] p54usb: probe of 1-2:1.0 failed with error -2 Nov 13 12:51:53 kernel: [ 543.923151] usbcore: registered new interface driver p54usb ethdetect finds eth0 but not wlan0. Why, I don't know, but the 'ip set link ...' lines in check-missing-firmware will not help to load the firmware: Nov 13 12:52:03 main-menu[265]: (process:4114): + check-missing-firmware eth0 Why does the driver think isl3887usb_bare is required? Firstly, it's not needed on my Sid machine; secondly, 'modinfo p54usb' doesn't mention it: Nov 13 12:51:54 check-missing-firmware: missing firmware files (isl3887usb isl3887usb_bare) for usbcore usbcore Firmware found: Nov 13 12:51:55 check-missing-firmware: copying loose file isl3887usb from '/media' to '/lib/firmware' Finally: Nov 13 12:52:03 main-menu[265]: (process:4114): + modprobe -r usbcore Nov 13 12:52:03 main-menu[265]: (process:4114): FATAL: Module usbcore is in use. This isn't very healthy! Surely a bug? If p54usb had been modprobed I most likely wouldn't be writing this report. The configuring of WPA/WPA2? That went splendidly!
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