Re: How to install wifi firmware with no wired connection

On Sat, 24 Oct 2026 at 11:19, Jordan Hubbard <jordan.hubbard@gmail.com>
wrote:

> Yeah, the picture Lars paints is wacky.  It looks like the different
> images are simply mastered in a different way and this would be easy to fix.
>
> I’d just point an agent at /usr/src and say “hey, fix this!” :-)
>

It's not that; we know what the various fixes are.

The problem is policy/choice.

srcmgr@ made a call a couple years back that firmware should stop being
included in base but should instead be put in packages.
Which in /theory/ I agree on, but in /practice/ it's an absolute pain in
the UX.

* not every image has firmware packages due to image size constraints (real
or otherwise);
* not all installations are online;
* having "stuff required to do basic connectivity" combined with
"connectivity is how i fix things
  when they break" live in /usr/local/ and/or be in packages is a shitshow
when your packages break.

So, I/we need to just gather info and user experiences and go have another
chat with srcmgr@
in the upcoming weeks to explain what the fallout of that policy is and
what needs changing.

I have some ideas (eg - pick a "we want this to work in base" NIC like rtwn
to always have firmware
in base; bless a subset of wifi firmware packages that will always be
shipped in every install
image being built") but we need that above user experience feedback and
have some understanding
of image size to do a trade-off proposal and sway minds.


-adrian