Re: Module failure on new install of Debian Bullseye

From: Leslie Rhorer
Date: Mon May 30 2022 - 02:51:17 EST




On 5/30/2022 1:11 AM, Christophe Leroy wrote:


Le 30/05/2022 à 01:45, Leslie Rhorer a écrit :
    If this is the wrong list, please let me know the correct one so I
can subscribe and post there.

    Two of my servers are having bizarre problems after upgrading to
Debian Bullseye.  After attempting numerous fixes, I decided to wipe the
systems and do a fresh install.  I did a fresh install of he first from
a netinst thumb drive, but the .iso does not contain the bnx2c drivers
needed for the ASUS PEB-10G/57811-1S 10GbE SFP+ Network Adapters used by
both systems.  I tried adding what I thought to be the correct non-free
drivers, but I still got errors about the bnx2x drivers and the
interface shows no carrier.  Since no carrier is detected on the
interface, no LAN or internet access is possible.  The system is
effectively dead, although it boots up and of course I have local
console access.

    After several different approaches, I changed from the netinst
image to a full non-free image.  It still would not properly load the
bnx2x drivers.  I tried downloading all six bnx2x e1, e1h, and e2
release 7.13.15.0 and 7.13.21.0 firmware files and adding them to the
initram image.  It no longer complains about missing files, but it
doesn't activate the NIC, either.  These servers are both essentially
dead in the water until I can get this fixed.

    The only thing I spot from dmesg that seems possibly related is:

...
[   12.976323] r8169 0000:0b:00.0: firmware: failed to load
rtl_nic/rtl8168f-1.fw (-2)
[   12.976478] firmware_class: See https://wiki.debian.org/Firmware for
information about missing firmware
[   12.976632] r8169 0000:0b:00.0: Direct firmware load for
rtl_nic/rtl8168f-1.fw failed with error -2
[   12.976636] r8169 0000:0b:00.0: Unable to load firmware
rtl_nic/rtl8168f-1.fw (-2)

Do you have that file rtl8168f-1.fw in your setup ? Is it at the correct
place ?

I will check. Without remote LAN support, it isn't very easy.

By the way, this seems to be more a Debian problem than a kernel
problem. Have you asked your question to Debian support ?

They and I do not get along. More importantly, while at first glance this might seem to be the case, I don't think it is. The github repository at

git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/firmware/linux-firmware.git/tree/bnx2x/

Is not a Debian thing. It is a kernel module thing for all distros. It is from there I downloaded the firmware (after it failed to load during install), and it is that which is failing. As I said, it could possibly be the realtek drivers also need to be loaded, and they are not, but I really would not expect it to be the case.