Subject: Re: bug#38524: 'dhcp-client-service' crash when non-libre networking interface is present

From: Ludovic Courtès <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 10 Dec 2019 18:11:41 +0100

Hi Brice,

Brice Waegeneire <[email-masked]> skribis:

> The 'dhcp-client-service' fail to start when a non-libre network 
> interface (here 148f:3070) is plugged-in even though there is an libre 
> networking interface (here 01:00.0) available.
> Removing the non-libre networking interface from the system allow 
> 'dhcp-client-service' to start correctly on the libre networking 
> interface.

By “non-libre interface”, I guess you mean a network interface that
relies on non-free firmware, right?

> $ sudo herd start networking
> [ 2758.305139] 1-3:1.0: Missing Free firmware (non-Free firmware loading 
> is disabled)
> [ 2758.395791] ieee80211 phy0: rt2x00lib_request_firmware: Error - 
> Failed to request Firmware
> herd: exception caught while executing 'start' on service 'networking':

So here the problem is that Linux-libre fails to load the non-free
firmware.  Could you bring it up on the Linux-libre development mailing
list?

I believe Linux-libre aims to allow people who want it to use non-free
firmware—it just disables it by default.  Now, I’d encourage you to
consider using hardware that does not rely on non-free firmware.  :-)

Thanks,
Ludo’.