John I cant help right now. But for benefit of other readers and myself, I would like to highlight this part of your changelog on the recent release. On wpasupplicant fixes:
NEWS: Due to a bug in wpasupplicant, ath9k_htc devices often failed connections using MAC address randomization, which is enabled by default with NetworkManager. Fixes are available as wpasupplicant updates in releases Stretch and later. (Resolves: #870159, #895696, #939075, #954457, #954861) On Sun, Dec 20, 2020, 1:02 PM John Scott <jsc...@posteo.net> wrote: > Hi, > > I'm not subscribed, please CC me. Also I've already sent a mail like this > one > to the kernel list; I hope this is the right place (as an outsider I don't > know if I need to be reaching the d-i team instead). > > I'm adopting the firmware-ath9k-htc package, which has been FTBFS for a > while > but I've already found a sponsor (Paul Wise) and expect my fixes will be > uploaded shortly [1]. > > These are some of the flagship chipsets for free wireless adapters, and > although it's good that the firmware gets built from source in a separate > package, until now it's been segregated from the installer and Debian > installations. I've sent a MR for the latter [2], so I'd like to know how > to > best tackle the former. > > I think I can build a udeb of my package before the freeze, but I wasn't > sure > if it would be easiest for you to do something else, such as copy the > firmware > into your udeb. I'm not familiar at all with the firmware/d-i aspects of > the > kernel packages, which doesn't appear well documented to me in code > comments > or the manual, but I'm willing to put in the work to make Debian more > usable > with free software and hardware. > > One hiccup though is that the firmware is included in firmware-nonfree; to > avoid > a filename clash I rename mine to 'htc_*-1.dev.0.fw' and set the kernel > option > to use the "development" firmware. This option would probably need to be > set > outright, or else the module needs to be reloaded. If it's appropriate, > I'd be > good to do a migration where it can be removed from firmware-nonfree and > firmware-ath9k-htc can take back the file name. > > I would appreciate your advice on how I can proceed. > > Sincerely, > John > > P.S. The reporter of [3] pointed out that, even if we're not building it > from > source, some of the firmware may be GPL and the Debian source packages do > not > ship the source code. Although I understand how meritocracy works, this > does > seem like a very serious problem which I'd like to mention in case you > haven't > considered. > > [1] https://mentors.debian.net/package/open-ath9k-htc-firmware/ > [2] https://salsa.debian.org/kernel-team/firmware-free/-/merge_requests/1 > [3] https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=890601#15
