I have the same PCI ID here and cannot reproduce this.
02:00.0 Network controller [0280]: Realtek Semiconductor Co., Ltd.
RTL8851BE PCIe 802.11ax Wireless Network Controller [10ec:b851]
Subsystem: AzureWave Device [1a3b:6111]
The card works on Debian trixie with the stock 6.12.107+deb13-amd64 kernel
and firmware-realtek 20250410-2, which ships exactly the firmware version
from the report:
rtw89_8851be 0000:02:00.0: loaded firmware rtw89/rtw8851b_fw.bin
rtw89_8851be 0000:02:00.0: Firmware version 0.29.41.3 (65cefb31)
It also works with firmware-realtek 20260622-1~bpo13+1 from
trixie-backports, which ships firmware 0.29.41.5, and on locally built
7.2 and 7.3-rc kernels.
About the error itself: "fw security fail" is RTW89_FWDL_SECURITY_FAIL in
drivers/net/wireless/realtek/rtw89/fw.c. That value is reported back by
the MCU on the card during firmware download, so the image was rejected by
the hardware rather than by the driver. Together with the same file
working here, that points at something board or card specific rather than
at the packaged firmware being broken.
Two things that would help narrow it down:
- the subsystem ID, from "lspci -nn -v" for the wifi device, to see
whether this is a different card variant
- whether the newer firmware from trixie-backports changes anything
