Bug#1109025: firmware-b43-installer: firmware download fails due to broken upstream URL and checksum mismatch
Package: firmware-b43-installer
Version: 1:019-13
Severity: serious
Justification: Policy 4.9
Dear Maintainer,
When attempting to install the package `firmware-b43-installer` on Debian 13
"Trixie" (testing), the installation fails due to a checksum mismatch of the
downloaded Broadcom firmware:
broadcom-wl-6.30.163.46.tar.bz2: checksum mismatch
sha512sum: WARNING: 1 computed checksum did NOT match
firmware-b43-installer.postinst: Downloaded firmware did not match known SHA512
checksum, aborting.
dpkg: error processing package firmware-b43-installer (--configure)
This happens because the URL used to fetch the firmware redirects to a
suspended hosting page (`cgi-sys/suspendedpage.cgi`), meaning the downloaded
content is not valid, resulting in a broken installation.
Steps to reproduce (on Debian Trixie):
1. `sudo apt install firmware-b43-installer`
2. Observe download and checksum failure.
3. Package fails to configure; Wi-Fi support is broken.
Expected result:
- The installer should download a valid firmware file or handle the missing
source gracefully.
- Systems relying on Broadcom Wi-Fi should not be left without a working
driver.
This violates Debian Policy §4.9: maintainer scripts should be robust and not
fail in this way.
Thank you for your work maintaining Debian packages.
Best regards,
catmaster
(Reporting from Debian Bookworm, but the issue occurs on Trixie)
-- System Information:
Debian Release: 12.11
APT prefers stable-updates
APT policy: (500, 'stable-updates'), (500, 'stable-security'), (500, 'stable')
Architecture: amd64 (x86_64)
Foreign Architectures: i386
Kernel: Linux 6.1.0-37-amd64 (SMP w/2 CPU threads; PREEMPT)
Kernel taint flags: TAINT_OOT_MODULE, TAINT_UNSIGNED_MODULE
Locale: LANG=es_CO.UTF-8, LC_CTYPE=es_CO.UTF-8 (charmap=UTF-8), LANGUAGE not set
Shell: /bin/sh linked to /usr/bin/dash
Init: systemd (via /run/systemd/system)
LSM: AppArmor: enabled
Versions of packages firmware-b43-installer depends on:
ii b43-fwcutter 1:019-8
ii bzip2 1.0.8-5+b1
ii ca-certificates 20230311
ii pciutils 1:3.9.0-4
ii wget 1.21.3-1+deb12u1
firmware-b43-installer recommends no packages.
firmware-b43-installer suggests no packages.
-- no debconf information
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