Bug#729325: Debian Wiki: Re: Bug#729325: debian-policy: [FHS] /usr/local/lib/firmware not a good directory for hardware plugged in at sytsm boot
On Mon, Nov 11, 2013 at 12:31:41PM -0800, Russ Allbery wrote:
> Sebastian Niehaus <niehaus@web.de> writes:
>
> > https://wiki.debian.org/Firmware recommends to place manually installed
> > firware to /usr/local/lib/firmware.
For reference: it still does.
> > If the hardware is plugged in during boot, the firware cannot be loaded
> > by udev because it tries to load the firware before /usr is mounted.
>
> > It does not try a second time.
>
> > See bug #729252 (duplicate?).
... where Marco d'Itri is uselessly confrontationnal.
But Michael Biebl is providing a detailed explanation in
http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?msg=21;att=0;bug=729252
In short: udev has broken backward compatibility and the search is
restricted to /lib/firmware in Jessie.
This backward incompatible change imply that https://wiki.debian.org/Firmware
and most firmware pages linked from this are giving incorrect instruction.
This page is partially autogenerated: it says:
Here is a list of Linux modules requiring firmware to operate, generated
automatically from Wheezy's linux 3.2.0-4-686-pae (Debian 3.2.41-2) kernel.
So maybe the generator need to be changed. (GeoffSimmons is CCed)
> I'm not entirely sure what you're asking for Debian Policy to do here.
> Standardizing on a location for manually-installed firmware is a bit
> outside the remit of this document, since we focus on the rules followed
> by packaged software. This seems more like something that should be set
> by whatever loads the firmware. The wiki page isn't maintained by this
> group.
It is not unreasonnable per se to document locations where user firmware will
be searched by packaged softwares, but this is moot now that the path for
manually-installed firmware and package-provided firmware is identical:
documenting the search path for package-provided firmware is useful for
interoperability between kernel and firmware-providing package.
At the very least, the change need to be more publicized to avoid systems
to fail to boot due to misplaced firmware after an upgrade.
Cheers,
Bill.
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