Hi Brandon, Brandon Werner <brandon_code@fastmail.fm> (2023-02-05): > I saw the recent work to the installer surrounding firmware handling > and thought I would test on my machines to see how this all was > working. I used one of the daily sid_d-i netinst cds including > firmware. I noticed some problems around the installer asking for > firmware that was not neded for ath10k. I first tried on a laptop that > had QCA-6174 hw2.1. I noticed the prompt telling me about missing > firmware and asking if I wanted to load it from additional media, > which was puzzling for the firmware image. If I select no, the > installer continues, however, I thought this could confuse users, so > I dug into it. Thanks for the tests and the report. > Before firmware atheros was loaded, the kernel tried to load versions > 6 through 2 of the firmware files as well as calibration firmware > files. After firmware atheros was installed, the card was brought up, > and this time, only three files were missing. The cal and pre-cal > files appear to be optional according to the driver source, and do not > exist in linux-firmware upstream, so I think them missing is no > problem. Firmware ver 6 doesn't exist yet in the upstream Linux repo > so maybe this is in the driver for future use? I guess the installer > still thinks there is missing firmware because of the kernel failing > to load these 3 unnecessary files. After version 5 of the firmware was > found, the kernel stopped trying to load versions 4 3 2, so there was > many fewer missing files on the second run of check-missing-firmware. We would need to see more of your log file. It starts with mainloop iteration #1, while the first check_missing call has happened already. > I have another laptop with hw3.2 of QCA-6174 and on that machine, only > pre-cal and cal are missing after firmware-atheros is loaded by the > installer. I looked at hw-detect, and noticed there was a section in > check-missing-firmware.sh ignoreing intel wifi debugging firmware, That one was obvious enough to ignore. But how are we supposed to tell which one(s) of the *68* files iwlwifi requests is(are) needed? > but I think trying to ignore all the correct files in that location > might be a bit tricky, especially if other net drivers try to load > optional firmware. It also seems possible that the PCI IDs searched by > the driver could be different for cal and pre-cal for different ath10k > hardware although I didn't dig into this. I hope the information I > provided is enough for package maintainers to determine a correct > solution. Thanks for all the great work on the installer recently to > make firmware handling work better. I don't think there's a way to identify what's needed and what's optional. We can't even determine whether firmware is actually needed! (e.g. my rtw8192cu requests firmware but works fine without it.) > Below, a bit of text from the installer log, to show the driver is > loading, but the installer still thinking there is missing firmware. Please include at least all lines between the first and the last check-missing-firmware lines. Cheers, -- Cyril Brulebois (kibi@debian.org) <https://debamax.com/> D-I release manager -- Release team member -- Freelance Consultant
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