Bug#433568: support for detecting missing firmware for vlan support

[Holger Levsen]

Hi,

I've installed Debian jessie in a setup yesterday, where I needed to use
vlan, so I was very happy when I saw that this bug has a patch.

However, the network card I used works nicely for configurations without
vlans without loading additional firmware, while it needs a non free
firmware to support vlans.

Looking through the patch for #433568 I could not see anything dealing
with such situations however :/


--
cheers,
Holger

[Ben Hutchings]

I've never heard of that situation before.  Which hardware is this?
Where is the need for firmware documented?

Ben.

--

Ben Hutchings
Humour is the best antidote to reality.

[Holger Levsen]

On Mon, Jun 27, 2016 at 02:05:53PM +0200, Ben Hutchings wrote:
> I've never heard of that situation before.

I think you have: PEBKAC :)

the server is located in a loud+dusty+dark room, has 4 ethernet devices
and it seems I mixed them up…

> Which hardware is this?
> Where is the need for firmware documented?

eth2 needs the non-free firmware but eth3 is the one actually connected
to the switch…

63: None 02.0: 10701 Ethernet
SysFS ID: /class/net/eth2
SysFS Device Link: /devices/pci0000:00/0000:00:01.1/0000:02:00.0
Hardware Class: network interface
Model: "Ethernet network interface"
Driver: "cxgb3"
Driver Modules: "cxgb3"
Device File: eth2
Link detected: no

64: None 03.0: 10701 Ethernet
SysFS ID: /class/net/eth3
SysFS Device Link: /devices/pci0000:00/0000:00:1c.4/0000:04:00.0
Hardware Class: network interface
Model: "Ethernet network interface"
Driver: "e1000e"
Driver Modules: "e1000e"
Device File: eth3

so, sorry for the noise.


--
cheers,
Holger

[Carsten Schoenert]

Hi there,

it's long ago this issue was opened and some working code was added by
patches. :-)

On Mon, Jun 27, 2016 at 02:13:33PM +0000, Holger Levsen wrote:
> the server is located in a loud+dusty+dark room, has 4 ethernet devices
> and it seems I mixed them up…

On my day job we now hit exactly this situation for some months now. Our
network infrastructure got renewed and mostly all physical ports now
have VLANs tagged only.

I remembered this report and extracted the patches and information
around, put it all together on top of the Git tree for the installer and
build various variants based on the master tree for the d-i but also for
the tree of buster. We were able to configure the network setup within
the d-i to recognize the VLAN ID and proceeded successfully further with
the installation of servers.

Technically it is working, as pointed out within this report some issues
regarding debconf are still needed to work on.

I attach the current WIP of my patch work here. I reworked the source a
little bit to follow the existing coding style for the new files and
routines. But there is nothing technically changed in the new source
files.

I'd appreciate if we could get one step closer to include VLAN support
for the D-I as possible release goal for bulleseye. If possible I work
on further needed adjustments.

Thanks and Regards
Carsten

[Lucas Bonnet]

Hello dear Debian maintainers,

I can confirm that the 2020 patch from Carsten Schoenert still applies
to d-i/netcfg releases 1.187 and 1.188, and result in a debian installer
that knows about VLANs and can be fully automated with a preseed config
like the following:

d-i netcfg/enable boolean true
d-i netcfg/use_vlan boolean true
d-i netcfg/vlan_id string 1001
d-i netcfg/choose_interface select ens3f0np0


We would be interested in helping push the patch upstream so that other
users can enjoy this without having to build and make their own initrd,
how can we help?


Regards,
--
Lucas Bonnet
Bearstech - http://bearstech.com