linux-firmware installed by default, but no subpackages with actual firmware installed

[Chris Murphy]

Hi,

On Fedora 23 and 24 Server, I'm seeing the linux-firmware package
installed, but none of its subpackages. As a consequence, any wifi
requiring firmware that Fedora supports in the linux-firmware package
isn't installed. So I'm kinda curious what the point of installing
linux-firmware is, if none of the firmware is actually being
installed? And also if this is intentional or a bug?

Thanks,

-- 
Chris Murphy

[Stephen Gallagher]

On 03/21/2016 12:06 AM, Chris Murphy wrote:
>  Hi,
>  
>  On Fedora 23 and 24 Server, I'm seeing the linux-firmware package
>  installed, but none of its subpackages. As a consequence, any wifi
>  requiring firmware that Fedora supports in the linux-firmware package
>  isn't installed. So I'm kinda curious what the point of installing
>  linux-firmware is, if none of the firmware is actually being
>  installed? And also if this is intentional or a bug?
>  
>  Thanks,
>   
linux-firmware is a strict Requires: of kernel-core, so I suspect that's why
it's on the system. If it's not *actually* required by the kernel, then this
should likely become a soft Requires instead. Also, we carry optional
installable packages on the DVD including the @hardware-support group which
includes all of the wifi firmwares. It's just not installed by default, since
the assumption is that Server is most commonly installed on wired ethernet systems.

[Josh Boyer]

On Mon, Mar 21, 2016 at 6:35 AM, Stephen Gallagher <sgallagh(a)redhat.com&gt; wrote:
>  On 03/21/2016 12:06 AM, Chris Murphy wrote:
> > Hi,
> >
> > On Fedora 23 and 24 Server, I'm seeing the linux-firmware package
> > installed, but none of its subpackages. As a consequence, any wifi
> > requiring firmware that Fedora supports in the linux-firmware package
> > isn't installed. So I'm kinda curious what the point of installing
> > linux-firmware is, if none of the firmware is actually being
> > installed? And also if this is intentional or a bug? 
Erm... there's a ton of firmware installed by linux-firmware.  Like
all the GPU firmware, bnx2x firmware, a bunch of other random devices,
and all of the AMD CPU microcode files.  I'm not sure why you suggest
no firmware is being installed.

>  linux-firmware is a strict Requires: of kernel-core, so I suspect
> that's why
>  it's on the system. If it's not *actually* required by the kernel, then this
>  should likely become a soft Requires instead. Also, we carry optional 
It's a hard requires.

>  installable packages on the DVD including the @hardware-support group
> which
>  includes all of the wifi firmwares. It's just not installed by default, since
>  the assumption is that Server is most commonly installed on wired ethernet systems.
Right.  Most of the existing subpackages of linux-firmware are
actually packages that used to be stand-alone but have been folded in
because their source moved to the upstream linux-firmware git repo.
The majority of those are Intel wireless firmware, but there are a few
others.  We won't be creating more though, as they are a real pain to
maintain in one spec.

josh