Thank you for the clue! My knowledge of the inner workings of debian is nascent but growing.
With that clue, I noticed that after installing the firmware packages a new initrd.img was automatically helpfully generated, and the new image does contain the needed firmware as you point out. old: :/boot$ lsinitramfs initrd.img-5.14.0-3-powerpc64 | grep R300* :/boot$ new: :/boot$ lsinitramfs initrd.img-5.14.0-4-powerpc64 | grep R300* usr/lib/firmware/radeon/R300_cp.bin However, updating the grub.cfg to actually use it is a manual step that I didn’t know about/realize I would need to do, so after doing that: sudo /usr/sbin/grub-mkconfig -o /boot/grub/grub.cfg The system now boots from the new, proper, image and all is well, the radeon driver is found and used: $ sudo dmesg | grep radeon [ 3.106881] [drm] radeon kernel modesetting enabled. [ 3.107020] fb0: switching to radeondrmfb from OFfb ATY,Whelk_ [ 3.107675] fb1: switching to radeondrmfb from OFfb ATY,Whelk_ [ 3.107901] radeon 0000:f0:10.0: vgaarb: deactivate vga console [ 3.108119] radeon 0000:f0:10.0: enabling device (0006 -> 0007) [ 3.108738] radeon 0000:f0:10.0: Invalid PCI ROM header signature: expecting 0xaa55, got 0x0000 [ 3.196056] radeon 0000:f0:10.0: VRAM: 256M 0x00000000A0000000 - 0x00000000AFFFFFFF (128M used) [ 3.196065] radeon 0000:f0:10.0: GTT: 512M 0x0000000080000000 - 0x000000009FFFFFFF [ 3.196151] radeon 0000:f0:10.0: dma_iommu_get_required_mask: returning bypass mask 0x1ffffffff [ 3.196351] [drm] radeon: 128M of VRAM memory ready [ 3.196358] [drm] radeon: 512M of GTT memory ready. [ 3.198547] [drm] radeon: 1 quad pipes, 1 Z pipes initialized [ 3.198710] radeon 0000:f0:10.0: WB enabled [ 3.198724] radeon 0000:f0:10.0: fence driver on ring 0 use gpu addr 0x0000000080000000 [ 3.199225] [drm] radeon: irq initialized. [ 3.199414] radeon 0000:f0:10.0: firmware: direct-loading firmware radeon/R300_cp.bin [ 3.200789] [drm] radeon: ring at 0x0000000080010000 [ 3.366523] radeon 0000:f0:10.0: [drm] fb0: radeon frame buffer device [ 3.378931] [drm] Initialized radeon 2.50.0 20080528 for 0000:f0:10.0 on minor 0 Thanks! My apologies that people coming into this mailing list are probably often like me, perhaps not deeply versed in debian/linux as yet, and finding themselves having to do a bit more than is needed compared to just booting Ubuntu onto an Intel system (which I have four of at present, for the past several years, and had to do almost nothing to get them to work). Your patience is much appreciated! That is now two PowerPC systems converted to debian, one 32bit, and this one 64bit. I have several more to go! Best, Ken > On Nov 6, 2021, at 1:31 AM, John Paul Adrian Glaubitz > <[email protected]> wrote: > > Hello Ken! > > On 11/6/21 01:47, Ken Cunningham wrote: >> $ ls -la /lib/firmware/radeon/R3* >> -rw-r--r-- 1 root root 2048 Aug 24 08:46 /lib/firmware/radeon/R300_cp.bin >> >> (...) >> [ 2.627772] radeon 0000:f0:10.0: firmware: failed to load >> radeon/R300_cp.bin (-2) >> [ 2.627802] radeon 0000:f0:10.0: Direct firmware load for >> radeon/R300_cp.bin failed with error -2 >> [ 2.627810] [drm:.r100_cp_init [radeon]] *ERROR* Failed to load firmware! >> [ 2.628128] radeon 0000:f0:10.0: failed initializing CP (-2). >> [ 2.628145] radeon 0000:f0:10.0: Disabling GPU acceleration >> [ 2.628158] [drm] radeon: cp finalized >> [ 2.794433] radeon 0000:f0:10.0: [drm] fb0: radeon frame buffer device >> [ 2.810380] [drm] Initialized radeon 2.50.0 20080528 for 0000:f0:10.0 on >> minor 0 > > Error 2 means that the file could not be found. Did you make sure that the > firmware > is actually part of your initramfs image? Looking at the timestamp, just 2.62 > seconds > after the start of the kernel is too early for the hard drive to be available > yet. > > Try using the lsinitramfs command to check whether your initramfs actually > contains > the firmware. I don't remember exactly, but there might be a switch for > initramfs-tools > to control which firmware to include. > > Adrian > > -- > .''`. John Paul Adrian Glaubitz > : :' : Debian Developer - [email protected] > `. `' Freie Universitaet Berlin - [email protected] > `- GPG: 62FF 8A75 84E0 2956 9546 0006 7426 3B37 F5B5 F913 >
