Dear Maintainer,

on Debian 13 (Trixie), the package firmware-realtek-udeb does not include
the firmware file rtl8168e-3.fw, which is required by the common Realtek
RTL8168/8111 network interface.

As a result, during installation with debian-installer (both stable and
daily images), the installer stops asking for the missing firmware.
After installation, the firmware works fine because the full package
firmware-realtek provides it.

Steps to reproduce:
1. Boot Debian Trixie installer (netinst or live with d-i).
2. Network hardware: Realtek RTL8168/8111.
3. Installer asks for rtl8168e-3.fw, which is not present in /lib/firmware.

Expected result:
firmware-realtek-udeb should provide rtl8168e-3.fw, so debian-installer
can use the NIC without manual intervention.

Thanks,
Andrea

Control: reassign -1 installation-reports

There is no such package; firmware is included in the installer images
without the involvement of udebs.
[...]

The firmware-realtek package does contain this file, and it is included
in the netinst image.

I'm reassigning this report to the installer team to investigate why the
file isn't being automatically installed.

Ben.

Hi,

Ben Hutchings <ben@decadent.org.uk> (2025-08-19):

[…]

Thanks for the reassign.

Andrea, let's start with seeing a /var/log/syslog extracted from a
system running the 13.0.0 netinst. (This happens at the beginning of the
installation process so the file shouldn't be huge, but feel free to
compress it anyway.)


Cheers,

I also hit this problem when installing debian trixie. 

During install, it logs the following.

check-missing-firmware: missing firmware files (iwlwifi-ty-a0-gf-a0-
77.ucode to 89) for iwlwifi
ethdetect: hw-detect exited nonzero
check-missing-firmware: taking network interface eno1 up/down
kernel: r8169: firmware: failed to load rtl_nic/rtl8125b-2.fw (-2)
kernel: r8169 eno1: Link is Down
check-missing-firmware: missing firmware files (rtl8125b-2.fw) for
r8169

These files are indeed missing from /usr/lib/debian-
installer/images/13/amd64/text/debian-installer/amd64/initrd.gz.

Providing the requested syslog is very difficult as the install fails
without this firmware.

Hi,

Olivier Cailloux <olivier.cailloux@dauphine.psl.eu> (2025-10-18):

The initial issue was about netinst or live, you're talking about
netboot, which is a different topic.

There's no non-free firmware in netboot images.


Cheers,

There are, however, non-official netboot image hacks out there which do
include non-free firmware, Olivier ;-)
< https://www.enlightenment.org/ss/e-68f4847136c902.37261841.jpg >