Bug#974646: W: Possible missing firmware /lib/firmware/i915/rkl_dmc_ver2_01.bin for module i915

[Markus Koller <markus-koller@gmx.ch>]

Was wondering about this error as well, looks like it's a benign warning and can be ignored: https://unix.stackexchange.com/questions/618869/debian-bullseye-firmware-for-i915

rkl is apparently Rocket Lake, the codename for an Intel chipset that is supposed to be released in early 2021. So this is the Linux i915 driver already getting support for hardware that is not released yet.

The i915 driver covers a wide range of Intel iGPUs, including all the current ones and sometimes even near-future ones if they follow a design similar to their predecessors.

The kernel modules like i915 include metadata indicating the firmware files they may need: the i915 module needs to declare the firmware files for all supported Intel iGPU versions this way.

The update-initramfs tool is not smart enough to cross-check the hardware information to find out which of the various firmware files declared by the i915 driver are actually needed by your hardware, so it will simply attempt to include all of them into initramfs.

Unless you have installed firmware files for all the Intel iGPU variants, you may get some nuisance messages from update-initramfs; but if they don't refer to the iGPU/chipset version you're actually using, you can simply ignore them.