Bug#888405: linux: Please add a link to the https://wiki.debian.org/Firmware to "firmware: failed to load" log messages
Source: linux
Version: 4.14.13-1
Severity: wishlist
Tags: patch
Hi,
Please add a link to the <https://wiki.debian.org/Firmware> to the "firmware:
failed to load" log messages.
The background here is that (if accepted) I will improve this page to
explain the ethical considerations of installing non-free software.
Whilst it could potentially be argued that if this change is made then
countless other error noisy messages should link to web-based documentation
too, I consider this a particular and special case due to the moral issues
of proprietary software.
Despite the potential irony of referencing a website if a wireless card
is unoperational, linking to such a page is superior to including such text,
not only because it is more concise it allows for expansion and improvement
of the text over time. Furthermore, the kernel debug log is clearly not the
place to "preach" about such matters.
Having this change in Debian would also allow our downstream distributions to
fairly easily have their own position on such matters.
Our parsing in hw-detect should be unaffected:
sed -rn 's/^(\[[^]]*\] )?([^ ]+) [^ ]+: firmware: failed to load ([^ ]+) .*/\2 \3/p' > $fwlist
Patch attached.
Regards,
--
,''`.
: :' : Chris Lamb
`. `'` lamby@debian.org / chris-lamb.co.uk
`-
diff --git a/debian/patches/bugfix/all/firmware_class-log-every-success-and-failure.patch b/debian/patches/bugfix/all/firmware_class-log-every-success-and-failure.patch
index b18580e..8c75c6e 100644
--- a/debian/patches/bugfix/all/firmware_class-log-every-success-and-failure.patch
+++ b/debian/patches/bugfix/all/firmware_class-log-every-success-and-failure.patch
@@ -18,7 +18,7 @@ removed in later patches.
This does not cover the case where we fall back to a user-mode helper
(which is no longer enabled in Debian).
-NOTE: hw-detect will depend on the "firmware: failed to load %s (%d)\n"
+NOTE: hw-detect will depend on a "[timestamp] module: firmware: failed to load %s (%d)"
format to detect missing firmware.
---
--- a/drivers/base/firmware_class.c
@@ -47,7 +47,7 @@ format to detect missing firmware.
__putname(path);
+ if (rc)
-+ dev_err(device, "firmware: failed to load %s (%d)\n",
++ dev_err(device, "firmware: failed to load %s (%d) - please see https://wiki.debian.org/Firmware\n";,
+ buf->fw_id, rc);
+
return rc;
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