Bug#786428: debian-installer: room for improvement for "non-free firmware" dialogs

[Stephan Beyer]

Package: debian-installer
Severity: wishlist
Tags: d-i

Dear Maintainer,

I installed Debian 8.0 today from a netinst image, on my notebook with
Intel Wireless hardware. Hence, to be able to install Debian over WiFi,
the installer told me that I need the firmware files

iwlwifi-2000-6.ucode
iwlwifi-2000-5.ucode

and that it can assist me by loading it from a removable media.

Hm, I couldn't remember that this was necessary for my last installation,
so I said "No", and -- surprise! -- it did not work. So I wanted to go
back and say "Yes" but I did not find a way to do it. There is a "Go
back" button, but going 1, 2 or 3 steps back did never ask me that question
again.

So I rebooted to re-start the installer.
And I booted the laptop next to me -- Windows installed -- and, in hope
to just find *.ucode files named like that, googled for it.
I expected that Google would print me a download site for the files
at the first or second place but it did not!

What I could find:
- the jessie and sid Debian packages (I just put it on the USB stick)
- https://wireless.wiki.kernel.org/en/users/drivers/iwlwifi
(which Google did NOT print by just googling for the firmware filename)
so I put the iwlwifi-2000-*.tgz on the stick.

However, I was unsure if this works. The dialog did not give me any
hint, if it could deal with .deb or .tgz or if it needs the .ucode files
in the filesystem.

So I tried, pressed "Yes", and some seconds later I was prompted if I
want to install over eth0 or wlan0. Great!

However, I would have expected some dialogs saying "Oh cool, we have
found iwlwifi-2000-6.ucode and iwlwifi-2000-5.ucode and everything
worked fine, you can now remove the removable media" ...
Well, so it wasn't there, fine, so I just removed the USB stick.

Still curious what happened, I looked into the syslog. It told me:
only iwlwifi-2000-6.ucode was found and used. The "-5" was not
necessary at all.
Hm, so the original "you need the following files" dialog could have
possibly said that I need only one of these files. I thought that
I need both.

Next I went on to partitioning. Interestingly, the installer asked
me what hard drive I want to partition. Hm, I only have one in the
notebook, what does it want from me? Oh, it thought the USB stick
is still present. I should not have removed it.....

So, to sum up, the debian-installer non-free firmware dialogs:
- should be able to be re-opened more easily,
- should provide more (and more accurate!) information how it likes
the firmware files to be served,
(according to other bugs: also which file system the removable
media should have)
- should give success information and say that the
removable media can be removed again (so that it is
not considered by the partition manager),

Best,
Stephan

-- System Information:
Debian Release: 8.0
APT prefers stable-updates
APT policy: (500, 'stable-updates'), (500, 'stable')
Architecture: amd64 (x86_64)

Kernel: Linux 3.16.0-4-amd64 (SMP w/4 CPU cores)
Locale: LANG=en_US.UTF-8, LC_CTYPE=en_US.UTF-8 (charmap=UTF-8)
Shell: /bin/sh linked to /bin/dash
Init: systemd (via /run/systemd/system)

[Holger Wansing]

Hi,

Post by Stephan Beyer
- should be able to be re-opened more easily,
- should provide more (and more accurate!) information how it likes
the firmware files to be served,
(according to other bugs: also which file system the removable
media should have)
- should give success information and say that the
removable media can be removed again (so that it is
not considered by the partition manager),

Firmware loading is documented in the installer manual:
https://www.debian.org/releases/stable/i386/ch06s04.html.


Holger
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[Debian Bug Tracking System]

Your message dated Thu, 16 Jan 2025 00:07:00 +0100
with message-id <F65B9DCF-E627-47F9-9F82-***@mailbox.org>
and subject line Re: #786428debian-installer: room for improvement for "non-free firmware" dialogs
has caused the Debian Bug report #786428,
regarding debian-installer: room for improvement for "non-free firmware" dialogs
to be marked as done.

This means that you claim that the problem has been dealt with.
If this is not the case it is now your responsibility to reopen the
Bug report if necessary, and/or fix the problem forthwith.

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