Re: Debian GNU/Linux 9 (stretch) was broken after upgraded from stretch-backports.

[didier.gaumet@gmail.com]

Le samedi 22 février 2020 11:50:05 UTC+1, Anastasios Lisgaras a écrit :
> On 2/19/20 8:14 PM, Anastasios Lisgaras wrote:

[...]
> > How do I see if my hardware needs
> > a particular firmware to work properly?

For the hardware already known to the kernel, the later will try to load a firmware when needed. So a search of the 'firmware" word in the kernel logs would show either succeeded or failed attempts:

didier@hp-notebook14:~$ sudo dmesg | grep -i firmware
[sudo] Mot de passe de didier : 
[    0.472650] Spectre V2 : Enabling Restricted Speculation for firmware calls
[    0.572837] ACPI: [Firmware Bug]: BIOS _OSI(Linux) query ignored
[    2.852914] i915 0000:00:02.0: firmware: direct-loading firmware i915/kbl_dmc_ver1_04.bin
[    2.853308] [drm] Finished loading DMC firmware i915/kbl_dmc_ver1_04.bin (v1.4)
[    3.336861] psmouse serio1: elantech: assuming hardware version 4 (with firmware version 0x5d4f01)
[    6.994202] bluetooth hci0: firmware: direct-loading firmware rtl_bt/rtl8821c_fw.bin
[    6.994260] bluetooth hci0: firmware: direct-loading firmware rtl_bt/rtl8821c_config.bin
[    8.628853] r8169 0000:01:00.0: firmware: direct-loading firmware rtl_nic/rtl8168h-2.fw
[10603.022395] (NULL device *): firmware: direct-loading firmware rtl_bt/rtl8821c_fw.bin
[10603.022420] (NULL device *): firmware: direct-loading firmware rtl_bt/rtl8821c_config.bin
[10603.022601] (NULL device *): firmware: direct-loading firmware i915/kbl_dmc_ver1_04.bin
[11124.667299] (NULL device *): firmware: direct-loading firmware i915/kbl_dmc_ver1_04.bin
[11125.905593] bluetooth hci0: firmware: direct-loading firmware rtl_bt/rtl8821c_fw.bin
[11125.905642] bluetooth hci0: firmware: direct-loading firmware rtl_bt/rtl8821c_config.bin

then if a firmware fails to load, you determine which package to install.

for example, here, i915 (intel graphic card with i915 module driver) needs a firmware. If succeeds to load, but if it was not the case:

didier@hp-notebook14:~$ apt-file search kbl_dmc_ver1_04.bin
firmware-misc-nonfree: /lib/firmware/i915/kbl_dmc_ver1_04.bin

and then you install the firmware-misc-nonfree package

[...] 
> > Really ; Is there any sure way to get away from it and so that I have a
> > proper system installed?
> > So, now the only way is to format my desktop and install the Debian
> > GNU/Linux from the beginning??? 0.0 :(
[...]

- *sure*: I don't think so
- a bit more risky: the previous link I gave:
 https://wiki.debian.org/SystemDowngrade