On 01/14/2017 04:13 AM, Pascal Hambourg wrote:
Le 14/01/2017 à 10:18, M.A. Perry a écrit :
On boot-up, the monitor briefly shows a message to the
effect "... failed to load rtl_nic/rtl8168g-2.fw firmware".
Running "dmesg | tail" shows much the same in more detail.
Nevertheless, the wired ethernet connection to internet
seems to work fine.(...)
The above suggests that other software takes over the
function of the missing Non-Free RealTek driver.
No.
1) The missing file is a firmware, not a driver.
2) No other software takes over the function of a missing firmware.
The function just won't be used. Some firmware functions are optional,
such as offload optimizations.
While I do not have a RealTek ethernet nic, the wireless interface on my
laptop is RealTek and it has a similar situation, though without the
firmware, the wireless interface will not run at all. The required
firmware for my interface is contained in 'firmware-linux-nonfree'
package. I suspect that package would probably work for you as well.
Check the information associated with this package and others discussed
on this thread to see exactly which one is needed for you nic.
As noted by other posts, in your situation, it appears that the firmware
is optional, providing extra functionality which you will probably never
notice (though the OS may well use it behind the scenes). Ultimately,
the question to answer is do you care about the possible optimizations
provided by the firmware and/or do you care about the message popping up
at boot time. If you don't need the optimizations and don't care about
the message, then you don't need the firmware.
--
73's de Mike, WB5VQX