On 13/04/2026 at 19:59, Bjørn Mork wrote :
So firmware dependencies are only detected for firmware present in the
installer environment, is that correct?
Yes.
Makes sense in a way.
Yes and no. Firmware can be divided in two categories:
- Those required by kernel drivers included in the installer for devices
might be needed during the installation, mostly network or storage
controllers. They are detected by parsing kernel messages complaining
about missing firmware files. Obviously they must be available in the
installer environment (initrd or installation media).
- Those known to be requested by kernel drivers not included in the
installer for devices which are not needed during the installation such
as graphic controllers. They are detected by matching detected device
modalias with patterns stored in /firmware/dep11/*.patterns files
(mostly extracted from kernel module "alias" fields at build time) for
each firmware package.
IIUC hw-detect logic for the latter category, detected firmware packages
are copied into a temporary cache and later installed in the target
system. This requires firmware packages to be available at detection
time. So I was wondering if it would be possible and desirable to
include modalias pattern files and queue firmware packages for later
installation from repositories like CPU microcode packages if they are
not available in the installer environment.
