Bug#769749: it installed a system that wouldn't boot without wifi firmware

[Tim Dowd]

Hi,

Thanks for the reply. I unfortunately didn't pay attention to whether or
not it was a warm or cold reboot. On the first install, it did not boot the
first time after the installation, so I guess that was a warm reboot. It's
a very old laptop without a battery so I yanked the cord to stop the
infinite loop. It was repeating a message about iwlwifi very rapidly. The
display manager had not yet started. When I started from a cold state it
did this maybe 10 times and then let me in. I erroneously installed the
linux-firmware-nonfree package thinking that was what I needed to do. It
would never get booted again, no matter what I did- it remained stuck in
the loop.

I reinstalled the system and chose XFCE because I was on the fence about
which I wanted anyway (I've always been an LXDE user, but it seems like
they're paying less attention to the GTK world.) This time i found the
firmware-iwlwifi package in non-free and used it, and no more problems.

Sorry I can't be more help- the specific system that crashed is gone. The
link you provided might have helped a new Debian user- I was deliberately
using the beta 2 installer because I thought it would help Debian to have
one more person use it. It certainly wasn't a fatal problem, but in
previous versions of Debian not having the correct firmware simply meant
that the interface was unavailable- it didn't lead to a crash.

Thanks for all your hard work. Jessie is a great system, and I wish I had
the technical skills to be more help. I can't wait for the official
release.

Tim


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Bug#769749: it installed a system that wouldn't boot without wifi firmware

[Geert Stappers]

On Sat, Nov 15, 2014 at 10:10:58PM -0600, Tim Dowd wrote:
 Package: installation-reports
 
 Boot method: Netinstall CD, Jessie Beta 2
 Image version: 
 http://cdimage.debian.org/cdimage/jessie_di_beta_2/i386/iso-cd/debian-jessie-DI-b2-i386-netinst.iso
 Date: 2014-11-15
 
 Machine: Compaq Presario V3000
 Processor: Centrino Duo
 Memory:
 Partitions:
 
 Output of lspci -knn (or lspci -nn):
 05:00.0 Network controller [0280]: Intel Corporation PRO/Wireless 3945ABG 
 [Golan] Network Connection [8086:4222] (rev 02)
   Subsystem: Hewlett-Packard Company Device [103c:135b]
   Kernel driver in use: iwl3945
   [  ]
 
 Comments/Problems:
 
 Installed i386 version of Jessie, selected MATE desktop. Upon booting,
 just got infinite loop of iwlwifi trying to find firmware.
 
 Upon reboot, this started, but calmed down enough to let MATE load. I
 installed the wrong firmware package, rebooted, and could never get
 back in
 
 Re-ran installation but chose XFCE instead. Started to have scrolling
 action but then XFCE loaded. I got the right firmware in and no more
 scrolling
 
 Bottom line is it installed a system that wouldn't boot without
 firmware (or a lot of luck.)

Hello Tim,

Good install report. Thanks for bringing this issue up.
I, as in I personaly, think that will be hard to resolve without
access to the hardware. So right now the only thing you know
is that someone has seen your bugreport and took time to acknowledge it.

I have some questions:

 Installed i386 version of Jessie, selected MATE desktop. Upon booting,
 just got infinite loop of iwlwifi trying to find firmware.

Was that a warm reboot? ( Was it without a power cycle? )

How was iwlwifi trying to find firmware shown to you? ( How did you
know what was inside the infinite loop? )


 Upon reboot, this started,

Was that a cold reboot?  ( Was it with turning-off and on again? )


Now imagine people that did a websearch on 
 linux 8086:4222

 I got the right firmware in and no more scrolling

What is the right firmware for the wifi device?
Where did you get it?


Would have https://www.debian.org/releases/jessie/i386/ch06s04.html.en
helped?


Groeten
Geert Stappers
-- 
Leven en laten leven


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