Bug#985696: debian-installer: Speech synthesis and Intel SOF firmware

[Arnaud Rebillout <arnaudr@kali.org>]

Package: debian-installer
Severity: normal
Tags: a11y
User: devel@kali.org
Usertags: origin-kali

Dear Maintainer,

some recent Intel sound cards require a firmware to work. This firmware
is packaged under 'firmware-sof-signed'. For reference, you might want
to look at the ITP [1].

As expected, selecting the "Speech Synthesis" option of the Debian
Installer fails on computer that have such sound cards, since the
required firmware is missing.

I tried it with my laptop. What happens is that the installer gets stuck
straight from the beginning, prior it can show any kind of GUI. All I
get is a black scree with the lines:

  Please wait while we probe your sound card(s)...
  No sound card detected after 3 seconds...
  No sound card detected after 4 seconds...

And so on. I don't know if there's a timeout, after 30 seconds I
switched off the laptop.

I thought I could customize the ISO and add the firmware under the
'/firmware' directory, but it's not that easy. The step that probes
for sound cards is done in the initrd.

I don't have a solution to propose, I am merely reporting the issue in
case it's not a known issue yet.

Cheers,

  Arnaud

[1] https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=960788