How to install firmware?

[lugoteehalt]

Replaced Etch with Debian Lenny on a i386 laptop and the sound does not work.

The kernel say: firmware: requesting ess/maestro3_assp_kernel.fw so assume that't the problem - the said firmware is abcent, the sound card being a maestro3 (not internet connected).

Searched for it on the internet and all I find is said thing in a .html file, it is a krypic ideogram of charachters.

So how do I install firmware, cannot find a package with it in on Debian.org? Thanks any help.

[lugoteehalt]

Ooop, just found this:
http://www.chineselinuxuniversity.net/articles/11519.shtml

You do not need to recompile the kernel, you need the appropriate binary firmware blob. Get the firmware package

ftp://ftp.alsa-project.org/pub/firmware/alsa-firmware-1.0.16.tar.bz2

and run ./configure && make && make install

After this you should have the following files present:

/lib/firmware/ess/maestro3_assp_kernel.fw
/lib/firmware/ess/maestro3_assp_minisrc.fw

Then, run rmmod snd_maestro3 and modprobe snd_maestro3 again.

I haven't tried it yet, since I still do have the older kernel. I probably will try it, but I'm not happy about it. I have half a mind to wait until the next kernel upgrade to see if the Debian team has come to its collective senses. I can understand distros/projects that really could care less if you used their code or not (OpenBSD comes to mind, but since it's so good, I'm using it anyway ... and the growling and grumbling is part of its charm), but Debian doesn't strike me as one of those projects that either wants to, or can afford to, alienate users new and old with crap like this.


So I'll give that a try and see if it works.:)