(Please provide enough information to help the Debian
maintainers evaluate the report efficiently - e.g., by filling
in the sections below.)

Boot method: netboot
Image version: https://d-i.debian.org/daily-images/armhf/ (March 19th, 2023)
Date: <Date and time of the install>

Machine: Solid-run Cubox-i (the machine I send the bug report from)
Partitions: <df -Tl will do; the raw partition table is preferred>


Base System Installation Checklist:
[O] = OK, [E] = Error (please elaborate below), [ ] = didn't try it

Initial boot:           [ OK ]
Detect network card:    [ OK ]
Configure network:      [ OK ]
Detect media:           [ OK ]
Load installer modules: [ OK ]
Clock/timezone setup:   [ OK ]
User/password setup:    [ OK ]
Detect hard drives:     [ E ]
Partition hard drives:  [ OK ]
Install base system:    [ OK ]
Install tasks:          [ OK ]
Install boot loader:    [ OK ]
Overall install:        [ OK ]

Comments/Problems:

During installation on a cubox-i, I run into two issues:

-> Machine did not reboot automatically at the end of the installation, but hang during the reboot process (see separate bug report on u-boot-imx https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=1033497 )
-> The installer did not manage to detect non-free firmare:

I got a non-free FW message:

┌─────────────────────────┤ [!] Detect disks ├─────────────────────────┐
    │                                                                      │
    │ Some of your hardware needs non-free firmware files to operate. The  │
    │ firmware can be loaded from removable media, such as a USB stick or  │
    │ floppy.                                                              │
    │                                                                      │
    │ The missing firmware files are:                                      │
    │ brcm/brcmfmac4330-sdio.solidrun,cubox-i-q.bin                        │
    │ brcm/brcmfmac4330-sdio.solidrun,cubox-i-q.bin                        │
    │ brcm/brcmfmac4330-sdio.bin brcm/brcmfmac4330-sdio.bin                │
    │                                                                      │
    │ If you have such media available now, insert it, and continue.       │
    │                                                                      │
    │ Load missing firmware from removable media?                          │
    │                                                                      │
    │     <Go Back>                                      <Yes>    <No>     │

I copied all files from

https://github.com/LibreELEC/brcmfmac_sdio-firmware

on a USB-stick (ext3 formated, with vfat I got an error, probably the filenames
were not compatible). I selected <Yes> but the same box showed up again and I
assume no FW files were found (but it did not say so).

Hi,

Am 26. März 2023 10:52:38 MESZ schrieb Rainer Dorsch <ml@bokomoko.de>:


Holger

Am Sonntag, 26. März 2023, 12:23:48 CEST schrieben Sie:

There are many symlinks in the repo and I used Dolphin (KDE filemanager) to
copy the data. It complained and pointed to a potential permission issue, but
reading the error message more carefully reveals that it is not a permission
issue, but it could not copy symlinks.

If I do a cp on bash, the files are copied as (many identical) copies, i.e.
symlinks are not preserved.

I have not yet tested if that resolves the FW not found issue though. It would
have helped me, if the installed would be a little bit more verbose and
reported something like

No non-free FW files found in these directories:
<dir1>
<dir2>

Then it would have become more obvious that the installer cannot see the ext3
formatted USB stick.

Thanks
Rainer

How could the installer report any directories if it cannot mount the
filesystem ?

Am Montag, 27. März 2023, 08:02:30 CEST schrieben Sie:
device is not included if there are directories which are part of the
installer already) this should give an indication that the problem is that the
media cannot be read and not that the files on the media are not detected or
matching.

You could try to go further: By doing a diff between the directories before and
after the retry of the installer, you might be able to print out a message
like "No new media detected in the system".

I think everything is better than the current behavior which is just telling:
"something went wrong".

Thanks
Rainer