Bug#574158: firmware licenses never displayed

[Petter Reinholdtsen]

tags 574158 + patch
thanks

What about just running the preinst in d-i after unpacking the
firmware deb to ask the license question, and remove the firmware if
the preinst return an error, presumably because the license was not
accepted?

Here is an untested draft patch implementing this idea.  I believe it
would work for firmware-ipw2100, and probably other firmware package
requiring the license to be accepted before being used.

Packages rejecting preseeding of the license question will probably
try (and fail) to ask the same question when the firmware is installed
into /target/, but I am not sure that is a problem with the firmware
packages we have today.

Not quite happy with the removal code, but did not come up with a
better approach than parsing the md5sum file, as udpkg do not support
removing packages and I found no stored information on which files
belong to which packages.

Index: check-missing-firmware.sh
===
--- check-missing-firmware.sh   (revision 63252)
+++ check-missing-firmware.sh   (working copy)
@@ -146,12 +146,35 @@
[ $arch = all ] || [ $arch = $(udpkg --print-architecture) ]
 }
 
+# Remove non-accepted firmware package
+remove_pkg() {
+   pkgname=$1
+   # Remove all files listed in /var/lib/dpkg/info/$pkgname.md5sum
+   for file in $(cut -d  -f 2- /var/lib/dpkg/info/$pkgname.md5sum) ; do
+   rm /$file
+   done
+}
+
 install_firmware_pkg () {
if echo $1 | grep -q '\.deb$'; then
# cache deb for installation into /target later
mkdir -p /var/cache/firmware/
cp -aL $1 /var/cache/firmware/ || true
-   udpkg --unpack /var/cache/firmware/$(basename $1)
+   filename=$(basename $1)
+   pkgname=$(echo $filename |cut -d_ -f1)
+   udpkg --unpack /var/cache/firmware/$pkgname
+   if [ -f /var/lib/dpkg/info/$pkgname.preinst ] ; then
+   # Run preinst script to see if the firmware
+   # license is accepted Exit code of preinst
+   # decide if the package should be installed or
+   # not.
+   if /var/lib/dpkg/info/$pkgname.preinst ; then
+   :
+   else
+   remove_pkg $pkgname
+   rm /var/cache/firmware/$filename
+   fi
+   fi
else
udpkg --unpack $1
fi


Happy hacking,
-- 
Petter Reinholdtsen



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Bug#574158: firmware licenses never displayed

[Joey Hess]

Package: hw-detect
Severity: important

firmware-ipw2100 has a license prompt that is supposed to be displayed
to the user. If this firmware is loaded by d-i from media supplied by
the user, this prompt is never actually displayed.

In #504668, it's claimed that the license's FAQ allows this,
which is the only reason I have not made this bug serious, yet.
Conversely, in #449235, decisions seem to be made assuming that
d-i will display the firmware prompt.

I see three approaches to fixing this bug:

1. Change the post-base-installer hook to not install firmware debs
   with dpkg -i. It needs to use apt for debconf frontend proxying to
   work. One approach might be to move this to a pkgsel hook, and use
   the already available firmware debs to prepopulate
   /var/cache/apt/archives, so they don't have to be downloaded again.
   Only problem with this approach is it fails if the user, in
   apt-setup, chooses not to use non-free, or even chooses to install
   without a network mirror. In this case, the installed system might
   end up without firmware needed to boot.

2. Rip the debconf frontend proxy setup code out of
   debconf-apt-progress, and adapt so it can be used with dpkg -i.
   Or hack debconf-apt-progress to support running dpkg -i.

3. Provide some way for firmware debs to communicate to d-i that they
   have a license the user needs to see, and have check-missing-firmware
   display these licenses before the firmware is ever used. This is
   probably the most general approach, as it will allow us to support
   firmware where it's a hard requirement that the user sees the license.
   (Which may already be the case, depending on which lawyers you ask?)

   One way would be to add a header to the firmware deb:

   License-Agreement: /usr/share/doc/firmware-ipw2x00/copyright

-- 
see shy jo


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Bug#574158: firmware licenses never displayed

[Frans Pop]

On Tuesday 16 March 2010, Joey Hess wrote:
 3. Provide some way for firmware debs to communicate to d-i that they
    have a license the user needs to see, and have check-missing-firmware
    display these licenses before the firmware is ever used.

This is the option that I have had in the back of my mind for some time.

I think for really structural support of firmware, we could repackage it 
like we do for kernel modules and include meta data (partially? 
automatically generated) about the deb something was taken from + licence 
requirements.

That would also allow to e.g. skip old versions of firmware.

My personal opinion is that it should actually be quite OK to include 
non-free firmware *udebs* on (CD) images as long as
- the licence in no way limits distribution;
- we never allow use of any non-free firmware without explicit ack
  by the user.

The *debs* should IMO always be either downloaded from a mirror (using 
standard apt-install) with fallback support for installing them from an 
external medium.

Under those conditions I think the project might be persuaded to accept 
inclusion of firmware in D-I images and on CDs.

We should of course keep support for loading firmware that does not match 
these criteria from external media.



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