Loading Missing Firmware

As described in Section 2.2, some devices require firmware to be loaded. In most cases the device will not work at all if the firmware is not available; sometimes basic functionality is not impaired if it is missing and the firmware is only needed to enable additional features.

If a device driver requests firmware that is not available,debian-installerwill display a dialog offering to load the missing firmware. If this option is selected,debian-installerwill scan avail-able devices for either loose firmware files or packages containing firmware. If found, the firmware will be copied to the correct location (/lib/firmware) and the driver module will be reloaded.

Note:Which devices are scanned and which file systems are supported depends on the architec-ture, the installation method and the stage of the installation. Especially during the early stages of the installation, loading the firmware is most likely to succeed from a FAT-formatted floppy disk or USB stick.

Note that it is possible to skip loading the firmware if you know the device will also function without it, or if the device is not needed during the installation.

debian-installeronly prompts for firmware needed by kernel modules loaded during the instal-lation. Not all drivers are included indebian-installer, in particular radeon is not, so this implies that the capabilities of some devices may be no different at the end of the installation from what they were at the beginning. Consequently, some of your hardware may not be being used to its full poten-11. The following command will remove an existing entry for a host:ssh-keygen -R <hostname|IP address>.

Chapter 6. Using the Ubuntu Installer tial. If you suspect this is the case, or are just curious, it is not a bad idea to check the output of the dmesgcommand on the newly booted system and search for “firmware”.

6.4.1. Preparing a medium

To prepare a USB stick (or other medium like a hard drive partition, or floppy disk), the firmware files or packages must be placed in either the root directory or a directory named^/firmwareof the file system on the medium. The recommended file system to use is FAT as that is most certain to be supported during the early stages of the installation.

Tarballs and zip files containing current packages for the most common firmware are available from:

• http://cdimage.debian.org/cdimage/unofficial/non-free/firmware/

Just download the tarball or zip file for the correct release and unpack it to the file system on the medium.

If the firmware you need is not included in the tarball, you can also download specific firmware packages from the (non-free section of the) archive. The following overview should list most available firmware packages but is not guaranteed to be complete and may also contain non-firmware packages:

• http://packages.debian.org/search?keywords=firmware

It is also possible to copy individual firmware files to the medium. Loose firmware could be obtained for example from an already installed system or from a hardware vendor.

6.4.2. Firmware and the Installed System

Any firmware loaded during the installation will be copied automatically to the installed system. In most cases this will ensure that the device that requires the firmware will also work correctly after the system is rebooted into the installed system. However, if the installed system runs a different kernel version from the installer there is a slight chance that the firmware cannot be loaded due to version skew.

If the firmware was loaded from a firmware package,debian-installerwill also install this pack-age for the installed system and will automatically add the non-free section of the packpack-age archive in APT’ssources.list. This has the advantage that the firmware should be updated automatically if a new version becomes available.

If loading the firmware was skipped during the installation, the relevant device will probably not work with the installed system until the firmware (package) is installed manually.

Note:If the firmware was loaded from loose firmware files, the firmware copied to the installed system willnotbe automatically updated unless the corresponding firmware package (if available) is installed after the installation is completed.

Chapter 7. Booting Into Your New Ubuntu System

7.1. The Moment of Truth

Your system’s first boot on its own power is what electrical engineers call the “smoke test”.

If the system fails to start up correctly, don’t panic. If the installation was successful, chances are good that there is only a relatively minor problem that is preventing the system from booting Ubuntu. In most cases such problems can be fixed without having to repeat the installation. One available option to fix boot problems is to use the installer’s built-in rescue mode (seeSection 8.7).

7.1.1. NewWorld PowerMacs

On G4 machines and iBooks, you can hold down theoptionkey and get a graphical screen with a button for each bootable OS, Ubuntu will be a button with a small penguin icon.

If you kept MacOS and at some point it changes the OpenFirmware boot-device variable you should reset OpenFirmware to its default configuration. To do this hold down thecommand-option-p-rkeys while cold booting the machine.

The labels defined inyaboot.confwill be displayed if you press theTabkey at the^boot:prompt.

Resetting OpenFirmware on G3 or G4 hardware will cause it to boot Ubuntu by default (if you cor-rectly partitioned and placed the Apple_Bootstrap partition first). If you have Ubuntu on a SCSI disk and MacOS on an IDE disk this may not work and you will have to enter OpenFirmware and set the boot-device variable,ybinnormally does this automatically.

After you boot Ubuntu for the first time you can add any additional options you desire (such as dual boot options) to/etc/yaboot.confand runybinto update your boot partition with the changed configuration. Please read the yaboot HOWTO (http://www.debian.org/ports/powerpc/inst/yaboot-howto/) for more information.

7.2. Mounting encrypted volumes

If you created encrypted volumes during the installation and assigned them mount points, you will be asked to enter the passphrase for each of these volumes during the boot.

For partitions encrypted using dm-crypt you will be shown the following prompt during the boot:

Starting early crypto disks... part_crypt(starting) Enter LUKS passphrase:

In the first line of the prompt,^partis the name of the underlying partition, e.g. sda2 or md0. You are now probably wonderingfor which volumeyou are actually entering the passphrase. Does it relate to your^/home? Or to^/var? Of course, if you have just one encrypted volume, this is easy and you can just enter the passphrase you used when setting up this volume. If you set up more than one encrypted volume during the installation, the notes you wrote down as the last step inSection 6.3.3.6come in

Chapter 7. Booting Into Your New Ubuntu System