blog/data/2012-01-27-skolelinux.txt

   1 Title: Handling non-free firmware in Debian Edu/Squeeze
   2 Tags: english, debian edu
   3 Date: 2012-01-27 23:30
   4
   5 <p>With some computer hardware, one need non-free firmware blobs.
   6 This is the sad fact of todays computers.  In the next version of
   7 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux</a> based
   8 on Squeeze, we provide several scripts and modifications to make
   9 firmware blobs easier to handle.  The common use case I run into is a
  10 laptop with a wireless network card requiring non-free firmware to
  11 work, but there are other use cases as well.</p>
  12
  13 <p>First and foremost, Debian Edu provide ISO images for DVD and CD
  14 with all firmware packages in the Debian sections main and non-free
  15 included, to ensure debian-installer find and can install all of them
  16 during installation.  This take care firmware for network devices used
  17 by the installer when installing from from local media.  But for
  18 example multimedia devices are not activated in the installer and are
  19 not taken care of by this.</p>
  20
  21 <p>For non-network devices, we provide the script
  22 <tt>/usr/share/debian-edu-config/tools/auto-addfirmware</tt> which
  23 search through the <tt>dmesg</tt> output for drivers requesting extra
  24 firmware.  The firmware file name is looked up in the Contents-ARCH.gz
  25 file available in the package repository, and the packages providing
  26 the requested firmware file(s) is installed.  I have proposed to do
  27 something similar in debian-installer (BTS report
  28 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/655507">#655507</a>), to allow PXE
  29 installs of Debian to handle firmware installation better.  Run the
  30 script as root from the command line to fetch and install the needed
  31 firmware packages.</p>
  32
  33 <p>Debian Edu provide PXE installation of Debian out of the box, and
  34 because some machines need firmware to get their network cards
  35 working, the installation initrd some times need extra firmware
  36 included to be able to install at all.  To fill the PXE installation
  37 initrd with extra firmware, the
  38 <tt>/usr/share/debian-edu-config/tools/pxe-addfirmware</tt> script is
  39 provided.  Again, just run it as root on the command line to fill the
  40 PXE initrd with firmware packages.</p>
  41
  42 <p>Last, some LTSP clients might also need firmware to get their
  43 network cards working.  For this,
  44 <tt>/usr/share/debian-edu-config/tools/ltsp-addfirmware</tt> is
  45 provided to update the LTSP initrd with firmware blobs.  It is used
  46 the same way as the other firmware related tools.</p>
  47
  48 <p>At the moment, we do not run any of these during installation.  We
  49 do not know if this is acceptable for the local administrator to use
  50 non-free software, and it is their choice.</p>
  51
  52 <p>We plan to release beta3 this weekend.  You might want to give it a
  53 try.</p>