- <item>
- <title>Handling non-free firmware in Debian Edu/Squeeze</title>
- <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Handling_non_free_firmware_in_Debian_Edu_Squeeze.html</link>
- <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Handling_non_free_firmware_in_Debian_Edu_Squeeze.html</guid>
- <pubDate>Fri, 27 Jan 2012 23:30:00 +0100</pubDate>
- <description><p>With some computer hardware, one need non-free firmware blobs.
-This is the sad fact of todays computers. In the next version of
-<a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux</a> based
-on Squeeze, we provide several scripts and modifications to make
-firmware blobs easier to handle. The common use case I run into is a
-laptop with a wireless network card requiring non-free firmware to
-work, but there are other use cases as well.</p>
-
-<p>First and foremost, Debian Edu provide ISO images for DVD and CD
-with all firmware packages in the Debian sections main and non-free
-included, to ensure debian-installer find and can install all of them
-during installation. This take care firmware for network devices used
-by the installer when installing from from local media. But for
-example multimedia devices are not activated in the installer and are
-not taken care of by this.</p>
-
-<p>For non-network devices, we provide the script
-<tt>/usr/share/debian-edu-config/tools/auto-addfirmware</tt> which
-search through the <tt>dmesg</tt> output for drivers requesting extra
-firmware. The firmware file name is looked up in the Contents-ARCH.gz
-file available in the package repository, and the packages providing
-the requested firmware file(s) is installed. I have proposed to do
-something similar in debian-installer (BTS report
-<a href="http://bugs.debian.org/655507">#655507</a>), to allow PXE
-installs of Debian to handle firmware installation better. Run the
-script as root from the command line to fetch and install the needed
-firmware packages.</p>
-
-<p>Debian Edu provide PXE installation of Debian out of the box, and
-because some machines need firmware to get their network cards
-working, the installation initrd some times need extra firmware
-included to be able to install at all. To fill the PXE installation
-initrd with extra firmware, the
-<tt>/usr/share/debian-edu-config/tools/pxe-addfirmware</tt> script is
-provided. Again, just run it as root on the command line to fill the
-PXE initrd with firmware packages.</p>
-
-<p>Last, some LTSP clients might also need firmware to get their
-network cards working. For this,
-<tt>/usr/share/debian-edu-config/tools/ltsp-addfirmware</tt> is
-provided to update the LTSP initrd with firmware blobs. It is used
-the same way as the other firmware related tools.</p>
-
-<p>At the moment, we do not run any of these during installation. We
-do not know if this is acceptable for the local administrator to use
-non-free software, and it is their choice.</p>
-
-<p>We plan to release beta3 this weekend. You might want to give it a
-try.</p>
-</description>
- </item>
-