Re: Manually add firmware (or other) packages for installation?

[Holger Wansing <hwansing@mailbox.org>]

Hi,

Justin B Rye <justin.byam.rye@gmail.com> wrote (Sat, 27 Feb 2021 05:39:57 +0000):
> Holger Wansing wrote:
> > The point is:
> > the current installer is unable to detect, if you have a graphics card, which
> > driver requires nonfree firmware! So, even if you use some of the non-free 
> > installation images with included firmware packages, the installer - as it is
> > now - will NOT install firmware for your graphics card.
> > In the worst case, the system will then be unable to display anything in X,
> > no login screen, nothing. 
> > What will users assume then, what happened? 
> > "My system hangs when booting!" or "My system cannot display anything via
> > my graphics card. Is the graphics driver broken?" or similar...
> 
> So we could add some extra hint about this in the intro:
> 
>                                                             This
>     may already have been dealt with, but if the installer does not include
>     non-free firmware packages, or could not detect the need for them, it
>     may be necessary to fetch them manually at this stage.
> 
> I'm assuming there's no point adding anything about wifi firmware on a
> thumbdrive, since that needs to happen *before* the APT setup stage...

I might make sense here, to install wifi firmware at this point, if you are
installing from a full CD or DVD image. That installation method does not
forcibly require internet access. So the system might be without network access
at this step. 
But I don't want to mention such 'special situations' here, to not make the
dialog unnecessarily complicated.

This is, however, the reason for the next sentence, where I point out, that
users can use the dialog, install ANY packages here.



In summary, I have thrown this all together to the attached patch.

Holger



-- 
Holger Wansing <hwansing@mailbox.org>
PGP-Fingerprint: 496A C6E8 1442 4B34 8508  3529 59F1 87CA 156E B076

diff --git a/debian/hw-detect.templates b/debian/hw-detect.templates
index c413e88e..3a1e4641 100644
--- a/debian/hw-detect.templates
+++ b/debian/hw-detect.templates
@@ -96,6 +96,29 @@ Type: text
 # :sl1:
 _Description: Checking for firmware...
 
+Template: hw-detect/firmware_packages_to_install
+Type: string
+# :sl2:
+Description: Additional/firmware packages to be installed:
+ Modern devices (like graphics cards or network devices) tend to need firmware
+ blobs to be loaded onto the device, to be (fully) functional. This may already
+ have been dealt with, but if the installer does not include non-free firmware
+ packages, or could not detect the need for them (this may be the case
+ especially for graphics cards), it may be necessary to fetch them manually at
+ this stage.
+ .
+ If you know your hardware requires this, and you have enabled "non-free"
+ package sources, you can list firmware packages here to have them installed.
+ For AMD/ATI graphics cards you might want to install "firmware-amd-graphics";
+ for Intel or Nvidia, "firmware-misc-nonfree".
+ .
+ Please note, that you can also use this dialog for installation of any other
+ additional packages you want to have installed, not just firmware. Package
+ names need to be space-separated.
+ .
+ If you don't know what to enter, just leave it blank to not install any
+ additional packages.
+
 # Temporary template to force old behavior of loading IDE modules by default
 Template: hw-detect/load-ide
 Type: boolean