Package: hw-detect Version: 1.84 User: [email protected] Usertags: debian-edu
At the moment, when the installer discover that some missing firmware block is requested by a kernel driver, it will look on the installation media for firmware or .debs containing the firmware. This works well when installing from CD, DVD or USB sticks, but do not work well for PXE installations. The common use case I run into is installing laptops via PXE over TP cable where the wireless network card need some extra firmware. The installer ask if I want to provide extra firmware using some local media, but I would prefer it if the installer would just download the required firmware directly over the net. After all, it is PXE installing with a working Internet connection. One way to do this would be to look for the requested firmware files in the Contents file available from the APT mirrors. Here is an example on how it could work when the ipw2200-bss.fw firmware file is requested: GET http://cdn.debian.net/debian/dists/squeeze/Contents-i386.gz | gunzip | awk '/^lib\/firmware\/ipw2200-bss.fw/ {print $2}' This would return non-free/kernel/firmware-ipw2x00, indicating that the non-free APT source is needed, and the binary package name is firmware-ipw2x00. This is all d-i need to be able to download the correct package and make it available for the kernel driver. To avoid downloading the entire Contents file (which is 16-19 MiB) to see which package contain firmware, it is probably a good idea to extract the relevant part during d-i or hw-detect build, and use this cached information when looking for firmware. An alternative might be to look at the package description. Ben Hutchings tell me on IRC that all firmware packages generated by firmware-nonfree have a list of files in their description. This might be an alternative way to find the wanted firmware packages. A third alternative would be to add some new header in the Packages files like the mechanism gstreamer and iceweasel can use to find their plugins. -- Happy hacking Petter Reinholdtsen -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [email protected] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [email protected] Archive: http://lists.debian.org/[email protected]
