https://bugzilla.suse.com/show_bug.cgi?id=1198655 https://bugzilla.suse.com/show_bug.cgi?id=1198655#c5 Larry Finger changed: What |Removed |Added ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- CC| |Larry.Finger@gmail.com Resolution|WONTFIX |INVALID --- Comment #5 from Larry Finger --- (In reply to Suse User from comment #0)

STR:

0. Test using TL-WN722N V3 wireless USB adapter: https://www.tp-link.com/us/support/download/tl-wn722n/

1. Disable the use of proprietary binary blobs:

# mv /lib/firmware /lib/_firmware

2. Run journalctl -f

3. Plug the wifi adapter

RESULT:

As expected, journalctl displays error messages related to the inability to load the firmware blob.

However, there seems to exist a fully FOSS driver which works without blobs. The one on TP-Link's site is some old version and I could not build it (it shows errors). Fortunately, there is a newer version which works fine with openSUSE Tumbleweed 20220414, tested with kernel version:

$ uname -rpvi 5.17.2-1-pae #1 SMP PREEMPT Sat Apr 9 06:30:15 UTC 2022 (b49cf22) i686 i386

4. Download the newer driver here (and use described steps to build and install it):

https://github.com/drygdryg/rtl8188eus

5. Reboot

6. Log in and plug in the USB wifi adapter (while watching journalctl -f)

RESULT:

The wifi connects successfully *without* failure messages in log related to inability to load firmware.

(NOTE: proprietary blobs are still in /lib/_firmware and hence not in use)

This manual process would have the drawback of one having to rebuild the driver on each kernel update. So, it would be much better if openSUSE includes this building as part of the distro, as this driver is obviously FOSS.

In the driver that comes from Realtek, either directly or indirectly, the firmware is stored in the code as a big table., thus your test was likely using such a driver, and you were in fact using a binary blob that is published under a GPL v2 license, but it is not available as source code for the imbedded CPU in the NIC. To get that firmware file, I merely copied that huge table into a separate program that wrote the contents into a binary file. The WHENCE file in the linux-firmware repo is as follows: Driver: rtl8188eu - Realtek 802.11n WLAN driver for RTL8188EU Info: Taken from Realtek version RTL8188EUS_linux_v4.1.4_6773.20130222 File: rtlwifi/rtl8188eufw.bin Licence: Redistributable. See LICENCE.rtlwifi_firmware.txt for details. The most pertinent part of the LICENCE file noted above is * No reverse engineering, decompilation, or disassembly of this software is permitted. Yes, the driver files are FOSS, but information about the firmware is never really open source, nor would disassembly be legal. -- You are receiving this mail because: You are the assignee for the bug.