Zacchiroli: working with FSF on Debian Free-ness assessment

Posted Jul 5, 2012 2:38 UTC (Thu) by gmaxwell (guest, #30048)
In reply to: Zacchiroli: working with FSF on Debian Free-ness assessment by anselm
Parent article: Zacchiroli: working with FSF on Debian Free-ness assessment

When I installed Debian unstable on a machine here recently it prompted me to install non-free software (some driver which I apparently don't need, since my ethernet works fine without it) and it continues to whine at every apt-get invocation.

So perhaps the FSF's expectations are a bit too high, as far as I can tell Debian still has a ways to go to meet even a lesser standard.

Zacchiroli: working with FSF on Debian Free-ness assessment

Posted Jul 5, 2012 13:18 UTC (Thu) by daenzer (subscriber, #7050) [Link] (5 responses)

Your description is too vague, please provide specific example output.

Zacchiroli: working with FSF on Debian Free-ness assessment

Posted Jul 5, 2012 13:47 UTC (Thu) by gmaxwell (guest, #30048) [Link] (4 responses)

Well, obviously I'm not going to do an reinstall to get the message from the install time, but the nag at every update is:

W: Possible missing firmware /lib/firmware/tigon/tg3_tso5.bin for module tg3
W: Possible missing firmware /lib/firmware/tigon/tg3_tso.bin for module tg3
W: Possible missing firmware /lib/firmware/tigon/tg3.bin for module tg3

Zacchiroli: working with FSF on Debian Free-ness assessment

Posted Jul 5, 2012 14:01 UTC (Thu) by daenzer (subscriber, #7050) [Link]

That just states the fact that the tg3 driver might not work properly without those files. I fail to see how that's 'prompting to install non-free software' or 'whining'.

BTW I think those messages only appear when the initrd is updated or something like that, not every time APT is invoked.

Zacchiroli: working with FSF on Debian Free-ness assessment

Posted Jul 5, 2012 14:02 UTC (Thu) by gmaxwell (guest, #30048) [Link] (2 responses)

Erp. To make it clear, during the installer the prompt was quite clear that the drivers were non-free. I haven't personally evaluated the relevant licensing situation for this driver, but it prompted me for something Debian itself considered non-free, which wasn't necessary, and I continue to get messages about it.

Zacchiroli: working with FSF on Debian Free-ness assessment

Posted Jul 5, 2012 17:06 UTC (Thu) by smcv (subscriber, #53363) [Link] (1 responses)

As far as I understand it, the tg3 driver requires binary-only firmware for some (half?) of the hardware it supports. All the Debian installer can see is "you have hardware for which the tg3 module is appropriate, perhaps you'll need the firmware for that".

Ideally it would be able to tell that your particular hardware was one of the models that works without additional firmware and keep quiet about it, while still giving the same prompt to people whose hardware wasn't going to work otherwise.

Zacchiroli: working with FSF on Debian Free-ness assessment

Posted Jul 13, 2012 0:46 UTC (Fri) by BenHutchings (subscriber, #37955) [Link]

As far as I understand it, the tg3 driver requires binary-only firmware for some (half?) of the hardware it supports.

The firmware file dependencies are declared statically per-module, so we can't determine whether a specific device might or might not need a firmware file. Only a few very early Broadcom GbE chips need those firmware patches. The others presumably still run non-free firmware but it's installed in some form of NVRAM.

The main reason for warning on upgrades is that new driver versions may require new firmware blobs. Perhaps we should try to avoid repeatedly warning about the same files.