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[homepage.git] / blog / archive / 2013 / 06 / 06.rss

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                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/</link>
 
        
+       <item>
+               <title>Automatically locate and install required firmware packages on Debian (Isenkram 0.4)</title>
+               <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Automatically_locate_and_install_required_firmware_packages_on_Debian__Isenkram_0_4_.html</link>        
+               <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Automatically_locate_and_install_required_firmware_packages_on_Debian__Isenkram_0_4_.html</guid>
+                <pubDate>Tue, 25 Jun 2013 11:50:00 +0200</pubDate>
+               <description>&lt;p&gt;It annoys me when the computer fail to do automatically what it is
+perfectly capable of, and I have to do it manually to get things
+working.  One such task is to find out what firmware packages are
+needed to get the hardware on my computer working.  Most often this
+affect the wifi card, but some times it even affect the RAID
+controller or the ethernet card.  Today I pushed version 0.4 of the
+&lt;a href=&quot;http://packages.qa.debian.org/isenkram&quot;&gt;Isenkram package&lt;/a&gt;
+including a new script isenkram-autoinstall-firmware handling the
+process of asking all the loaded kernel modules what firmware files
+they want, find debian packages providing these files and install the
+debian packages.  Here is a test run on my laptop:&lt;/p&gt;
+
+&lt;p&gt;&lt;pre&gt;
+# isenkram-autoinstall-firmware 
+info: kernel drivers requested extra firmware: ipw2200-bss.fw ipw2200-ibss.fw ipw2200-sniffer.fw
+info: fetching http://http.debian.net/debian/dists/squeeze/Contents-i386.gz
+info: locating packages with the requested firmware files
+info: Updating APT sources after adding non-free APT source
+info: trying to install firmware-ipw2x00
+firmware-ipw2x00
+firmware-ipw2x00
+Preconfiguring packages ...
+Selecting previously deselected package firmware-ipw2x00.
+(Reading database ... 259727 files and directories currently installed.)
+Unpacking firmware-ipw2x00 (from .../firmware-ipw2x00_0.28+squeeze1_all.deb) ...
+Setting up firmware-ipw2x00 (0.28+squeeze1) ...
+# 
+&lt;/pre&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
+
+&lt;p&gt;When all the requested firmware is present, a simple message is
+printed instead:&lt;/p&gt;
+
+&lt;p&gt;&lt;pre&gt;
+# isenkram-autoinstall-firmware 
+info: did not find any firmware files requested by loaded kernel modules.  exiting
+# 
+&lt;/pre&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
+
+&lt;p&gt;It could use some polish, but it is already working well and saving
+me for time when setting up new machines. :)&lt;/p&gt;
+
+&lt;p&gt;So, how does it work?  It look at the set of currently loaded
+kernel modules, and look up each one of them using modinfo, to find
+the firmware files listed in the module meta-information.  Next, it
+download the Contents file from a nearby APT mirror, and search for
+the firmware files in this file to locate the package with the
+requested firmware file.  If the package is in the non-free section, a
+non-free APT source is added and the package is installed using
+&lt;tt&gt;apt-get install&lt;/tt&gt;.  The end result is a slightly better working
+machine.&lt;/p&gt;
+
+&lt;p&gt;I hope someone find time to implement a more polished version of
+this script as part of the hw-detect debian-installer module, to
+finally fix &lt;a href=&quot;http://bugs.debian.org/655507&quot;&gt;BTS report
+#655507&lt;/a&gt;.  There really is no need to insert USB sticks with
+firmware during a PXE install when the packages already are available
+from the nearby Debian mirror.&lt;/p&gt;
+</description>
+       </item>
+       
        <item>
                <title>The value of a good distro wide test suite...</title>
                <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/The_value_of_a_good_distro_wide_test_suite___.html</link>