Techy stuff for developers

DeepDayze · 2021-07-25 20:12:07

twoion wrote:

DeepDayze wrote:
twoion wrote:
They should just follow the Arch linux way and ship a single package linux-firmware...problem solved. Always all firmware installed. This is really a homegrown issue. Arguably, BL could decide to always install all firmware packages. Bit of disk space, lots of compatibility.
Perhaps one giant meta-package to pull all the firmware in? Perhaps BL could ship one called something like bunsen-firmware-all.
Thoughts?
We need to sort through Debian first. They also have some big ass meta packages that include a lot but not quite all. All-firmwares-in-the-box would be really great however. Esp. since BL focusses on having things work and not hardcore FOSS I don't see why users shouldn't enjoy a 2021 appropriate experience The DVD install ISOs are not getting smaller anyway, and if need be, the firmwares can still be excluded from the CD sized ISO if they happen to be 500M+ in size.

Thanks for the feedback and perhaps maybe not on the ISO itself but available thru the BL repos even. Would be good for Debian to sort it out first however like you mentioned.

hhh · 2021-07-25 22:35:16

twoion wrote:

DeepDayze wrote:
twoion wrote:
They should just follow the Arch linux way and ship a single package linux-firmware...problem solved. Always all firmware installed. This is really a homegrown issue. Arguably, BL could decide to always install all firmware packages. Bit of disk space, lots of compatibility.
Perhaps one giant meta-package to pull all the firmware in? Perhaps BL could ship one called something like bunsen-firmware-all.
Thoughts?
We need to sort through Debian first. They also have some big ass meta packages that include a lot but not quite all. All-firmwares-in-the-box would be really great however. Esp. since BL focusses on having things work and not hardcore FOSS I don't see why users shouldn't enjoy a 2021 appropriate experience The DVD install ISOs are not getting smaller anyway, and if need be, the firmwares can still be excluded from the CD sized ISO if they happen to be 500M+ in size.

We also need to wait for the Bullseye release. Nothing has been actually finalized yet. Ardour stopped working a week ago and now works again with the latest updates, which include a new kernel, for example.

johnraff · 2021-07-26 00:15:59

Hey guys, take a look at the current BL default package list, for example in bunsen-meta-all:
https://github.com/BunsenLabs/bunsen-me … an/control

The Beryllium list is still in flux, but atm holds:
firmware-b43-installer
firmware-b43legacy-installer
firmware-linux
firmware-realtek
firmware-iwlwifi

firmware-linux is a Debian metapackage, depending in turn on firmware-linux-free and firmware-linux-nonfree

So we already ship quite a lot of firmware out of the box.

At installation time the show-stopper is wireless, especially the b43 stuff which has to be downloaded (nice Catch 22) but thanks to @hhh's work in the past we ship the necessary b43 firmware in the iso.

There's a lot of other firmware in the Debian repos though:
https://packages.debian.org/search?suit … s=firmware

As DeepDaze suggests, we could create a new bunsen-firmware-all metapackage to pull all, or a subset, of it, and either add it by default or just make it available in the BL repos? It might make life simpler for some users?

PS It might be interesting to see what firmware Ubuntu selected to go in their Big Blob.

Last edited by johnraff (2021-07-26 00:21:18)

DeepDayze · 2021-07-26 01:14:14

@Johnraff, the concern may be the size of all the firmware files to be pulled in by the suggested bunsen-firmware-all package as @nobody alluded to, be too large to fit them all onto the CD-size ISO, but maybe on the DVD-sized one it can be included. Having that proposed BL meta-package in the BL repos would also be useful for those upgrading from older releases or for those using the CD-sized ISO.

Last edited by DeepDayze (2021-07-26 01:15:26)

johnraff · 2021-07-26 03:05:40

^There's no way such a firmware bundle could go on a CD sized iso. I'd say, right now, whether we can even continue shipping a CD iso or not is up for question. Every Debian release the size of the core components goes up, and Lithium already meant a lot of squeezing and corner-cutting.

I doubt many people use DVDs now (?) but our regular iso could hold a bunsen-firmware-all metapackage if we agreed on what should go in it. Or just have it in the repos.

DeepDayze · 2021-07-26 03:50:33

johnraff wrote:

^There's no way such a firmware bundle could go on a CD sized iso. I'd say, right now, whether we can even continue shipping a CD iso or not is up for question. Every Debian release the size of the core components goes up, and Lithium already meant a lot of squeezing and corner-cutting.
I doubt many people use DVDs now (?) but our regular iso could hold a bunsen-firmware-all metapackage if we agreed on what should go in it. Or just have it in the repos.

Yeah understandable and maybe it's time to consider abandoning the CD-sized format and simply delivering the 32 bit image as a DVD sized one. Hopefully you can at least ship a smaller DVD-lite ISO file image that perhaps is not larger than 800MB...

Last edited by DeepDayze (2021-07-26 03:51:55)

johnraff · 2021-07-26 04:23:17

DeepDayze wrote:

Hopefully you can at least ship a smaller DVD-lite ISO file image that perhaps is not larger than 800MB...

That could be the current CD iso if it turns out to be impossible to get it down to 700MB. But maybe in that case, rather than iso size, tweak it for lightness in system demands when installed? The bunsen-meta-light metapackage attempts to do that in a small way, but probably more could be done, as long as it didn't take away too much dev time from the main setup.

johnraff · 2021-07-27 06:27:04

But, let's not forget the above link was to an ongoing conversation. There was more activity yesterday, eg: https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugrepo … =989863#41

These guys aren't messing around - what they're aiming to do AFAICT is to have the "with-firmware" Debian isos check over the system hardware, add "non-free" repo if necessary and automatically install any firmware needed.

Quite a bit more elegant than shipping a 200MB bundle by default.

What's more, it looks as if a good bit of this will be in place for the Bullseye release:
https://tracker.debian.org/news/1245038 … -unstable/
https://tracker.debian.org/news/1244998 … -unstable/

So I think we should hold off on any BL firmware metapackage, and rather focus on making sure our live-build setup includes these improvements.

DeepDayze · 2021-07-27 13:37:59

Didn't see that new convo @Johnraff, and that sounds like a very good thing it will be in Bullseye and then Beryllium! ^^

Having the installer auto-install any f/w needed will be a good thing, or at least prompt the user if they want to install any firmware for devices that are detected.

Last edited by DeepDayze (2021-07-27 13:39:30)

johnraff · 2021-07-28 00:59:59

So we might need to wait till post-Bullseye-release to see how it all shakes out, but if the stars align right maybe the good live-build people will import this in time for our Beryllium build. Alternatively, maybe there'll be a path for us to do it ourselves...

johnraff · 2021-10-30 08:08:45

Issues to be aware of for bullseye

Might be worth a read:
https://www.debian.org/releases/bullsey … on.en.html

For example:

be aware that upgrading to the intel-microcode package in bullseye may cause your system to hang on boot or break iwlwifi

With the implementation of sulogin used since buster, booting with the rescue option always requires the root password. If one has not been set, this makes the rescue mode effectively unusable. However it is still possible to boot using the kernel parameter init=/sbin/sulogin --force

sleekmason · 2021-10-30 15:23:41

johnraff wrote:

Issues to be aware of for bullseye
Might be worth a read:
https://www.debian.org/releases/bullsey … on.en.html
For example:
be aware that upgrading to the intel-microcode package in bullseye may cause your system to hang on boot or break iwlwifi
With the implementation of sulogin used since buster, booting with the rescue option always requires the root password. If one has not been set, this makes the rescue mode effectively unusable. However it is still possible to boot using the kernel parameter init=/sbin/sulogin --force

Thanks for the link!

For a fix, already made a build with:

[Service]
Environment=SYSTEMD_SULOGIN_FORCE=1

enabled in /etc/systemd/system/rescue.service.d/override.conf" with zero issues so far (only tested in virtual.)

Also noted in the list; exfat-utils is being replaced with exfatprogs for gparted. Installing exfatprogs will remove exfat-utils.

johnraff · 2022-03-28 00:44:20

FAI (Fully Automatic Installation) for Debian GNU/Linux

Might be of interest to some:
https://wiki.debian.org/FAI

EDIT: These from Philip Hands on the same topic might also be of interest:
https://lists.debian.org/debian-boot/20 … 00157.html
https://hands.com/d-i/

Last edited by johnraff (2022-03-29 02:04:24)

johnraff · 2022-03-29 02:10:06

Roland Clobus has been hard at work:
Eighth status update about reproducible live-build ISO images in Jenkins

johnraff · 2022-04-01 02:42:36

More from Roland Clobus about the future of Debian live images:
Live images for Debian 12 (bookworm)
Basically just notes, but he lists a lot of important things to consider.

sleekmason · 2022-04-01 12:08:56

johnraff wrote:

More from Roland Clobus about the future of Debian live images:
Live images for Debian 12 (bookworm)
Basically just notes, but he lists a lot of important things to consider.

Yes indeed! Thank you for sharing. Looks like the answer on where to get calamares configs too!

johnraff · 2022-12-25 01:11:48

About firmware again, I just today discovered there's a package fwupd that handles firmware updates, using the LVFS service.

It might be worth having a look at this.

( Still plenty of bugs though. )

or1o9 · 2022-12-25 11:13:34

^Yes! Indispensable in my opinion. If not in the iso, definitely something for the "Boron" welcome script.

johnraff · 2022-12-26 04:28:12

^@orionH you got some useful firmware upgrades from fwupd? I'm getting a warning: "UEFI capsule updates not available or enabled in firmware setup", and after looking at my BIOS settings sort of gave up. Maybe my machine is too old to benefit.

or1o9 · 2022-12-26 09:55:51

^@johnraff I use Intel based Thinkpads that are from 2017 - 2018 if i remember correctly, and I do upgrades from time to time, kind of when I remember that it has been a while since last time. Have also a ca ten year old Thinkpad that I haven´t even bothered to try to update with fwupd because as I understand it, it´s too old. And works remarkably well anyway, plus I only use it for testing stuff. Added some links about it that might be of interest.

https://fwupd.org/

https://github.com/fwupd/fwupd

https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/fwupd

https://www.omgubuntu.co.uk/2018/08/lvf … ates-linux

#21 2021-07-25 20:12:07

Re: Techy stuff for developers

#22 2021-07-25 22:35:16

Re: Techy stuff for developers

#23 2021-07-26 00:15:59

Re: Techy stuff for developers

#24 2021-07-26 01:14:14

Re: Techy stuff for developers

#25 2021-07-26 03:05:40

Re: Techy stuff for developers

#26 2021-07-26 03:50:33

Re: Techy stuff for developers

#27 2021-07-26 04:23:17

Re: Techy stuff for developers

#28 2021-07-27 06:27:04

Re: Techy stuff for developers

#29 2021-07-27 13:37:59

Re: Techy stuff for developers

#30 2021-07-28 00:59:59

Re: Techy stuff for developers

#31 2021-10-30 08:08:45

Re: Techy stuff for developers

#32 2021-10-30 15:23:41

Re: Techy stuff for developers

#33 2022-03-28 00:44:20

Re: Techy stuff for developers

#34 2022-03-29 02:10:06

Re: Techy stuff for developers

#35 2022-04-01 02:42:36

Re: Techy stuff for developers

#36 2022-04-01 12:08:56

Re: Techy stuff for developers

#37 2022-12-25 01:11:48

Re: Techy stuff for developers

#38 2022-12-25 11:13:34

Re: Techy stuff for developers

#39 2022-12-26 04:28:12

Re: Techy stuff for developers

#40 2022-12-26 09:55:51

Re: Techy stuff for developers

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