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Bug#541702: linux-image-2.6.30-1-686: Kernel fails to start networking because no e100 firmware



On Sat, 2009-08-15 at 14:16 -0500, James Bottomley wrote:
> On Sat, 2009-08-15 at 19:21 +0100, Ben Hutchings wrote:
> > On Sat, 2009-08-15 at 10:47 -0700, James.Bottomley@HansenPartnership.com
> > wrote:
> > > Package: linux-image-2.6.30-1-686
> > > Version: 2.6.30-5
> > > Severity: serious
> > > Justification: Policy 2.2.1
> > 
> > That very same section explains why we cannot do what you are
> > suggesting!
> 
> No, it doesn't ... the decision to put firmware-linux in non-free is
> obviously wrong, since the same firmware was shipped as is in main with
> 2.6.26-2

There have been a series of GRs that confirmed that sourceless firmware
belongs in non-free.  Although violations were not considered for etch
and lenny, they were bugs (in this case, #494308).

> > > On upgrade from 2.6.30-2-686 networking (on a remote machine) failed to
> > > start, meaning that a support ticket had to be opened for KVM access.
> > 
> > I don't recommend running unstable on production machines.
> 
> If you bother to read the bug report, you'd see it's actually running
> testing.

The same goes for testing.

> > > Diagnosis revealed that the e100 driver in 2.6.26-2-686 required no
> > > firmware, so the firmware-linux package wasn't installed.  Apparently
> > > 2.6.30-1-686 was built with external firmware for the e100 so it now
> > > depends on the firmware-linux package.
> > > 
> > > This is a serious policy violation because required hardware stops
> > > working after the upgrade.
> > 
> > No, most systems do not require the firmware-linux package.
> 
> That's not really relevant, is it?  linux-image ships with a ton of
> drivers most systems don't use as well.

It is certainly relevant to the question of whether firmware-linux
should be a dependency.

> The point is that what was working before the upgrade didn't work after
> it.

I'm sorry about that but the change has been agreed by the project.

> > > Fix suggested is to make 2.6.30-1-686 depend on linux-firmware so that
> > > on upgrade the necessary firmware is present.
> > 
> > I intend to ensure that firmware-linux is mentioned in the release notes
> > for squeeze, but it cannot be recommended or made a dependency.
> 
> So this amounts to ... assuming the user can find the notice (because
> there's a blizzard of notices that go with each upgrade, particularly if
> they're going from lenny -> squeeze) you'll tell them that you broke
> their system?
>
> The point here is to try and ensure large numbers of systems don't break
> before this exits testing for stable.

Then please put your effort into ensuring that this change is
prominently announced at the time of the squeeze release.

Ben.

-- 
Ben Hutchings
Never put off till tomorrow what you can avoid all together.

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