Bug#661069: radeon (evergreen): random-looking pattern of pixels when firmware not installed

[Jonathan Nieder <jrnieder@gmail.com>]

retitle 661069 d-i: radeon: Please make sure firmware is installed or the user warned about its lack.
tags 661069 + wheezy
# basic support for common hardware
severity 661069 important
quit

Hi,

Thomas Kippenberg wrote:

> Concerning the installer: There was no warning about the missing
> firmware for the graphics card.

Since the kernel's bad behavior without firmware is already being
tracked by bug#607194 et al, let's make this bug about that.

d-i team: can you reproduce this?  Does installing on a machine with a
radeon not warn about missing firmware?  Is that fixable, for example
by using vesafb instead for affected cards when the firmware is
missing?

Hope that helps,
Jonathan