On 01/14/2017 04:43 AM, Michael Milliman wrote:
On 01/14/2017 04:13 AM, Pascal Hambourg wrote:
Le 14/01/2017 à 10:18, M.A. Perry a écrit :
On boot-up, the monitor briefly shows a message to the
effect "... failed to load rtl_nic/rtl8168g-2.fw firmware".
Running "dmesg | tail" shows much the same in more detail.
Nevertheless, the wired ethernet connection to internet
seems to work fine.(...)
The above suggests that other software takes over the
function of the missing Non-Free RealTek driver.
No.
1) The missing file is a firmware, not a driver.
2) No other software takes over the function of a missing firmware.
The function just won't be used. Some firmware functions are
optional, such as offload optimizations.
While I do not have a RealTek ethernet nic, the wireless interface on
my laptop is RealTek and it has a similar situation, though without
the firmware, the wireless interface will not run at all. The required
firmware for my interface is contained in 'firmware-linux-nonfree'
package.
After a little more research, I find that I am in fact incorrect. The
package 'firmware-realtek' is installed on my system and is required for
my wireless interface. I'm not sure how it got installed, as I did not
explicitly install it. 'firmware-linux-nonfree' is also required on my
system, however that package appears to be needed only for the Radeon
graphics.
My apologies for the error.
I suspect that package would probably work for you as well. Check
the information associated with this package and others discussed on
this thread to see exactly which one is needed for you nic.
As noted by other posts, in your situation, it appears that the
firmware is optional, providing extra functionality which you will
probably never notice (though the OS may well use it behind the
scenes). Ultimately, the question to answer is do you care about the
possible optimizations provided by the firmware and/or do you care
about the message popping up at boot time. If you don't need the
optimizations and don't care about the message, then you don't need
the firmware.
--
73's de Mike, WB5VQX
