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Bug 1580462 - Compress firmwares by default
Summary: Compress firmwares by default
Keywords:
Status: CLOSED DUPLICATE of bug 1888831
Alias: None
Product: Fedora
Classification: Fedora
Component: linux-firmware
Version: rawhide
Hardware: All
OS: Linux
unspecified
medium
Target Milestone: ---
Assignee: Peter Robinson
QA Contact: Fedora Extras Quality Assurance
URL:
Whiteboard:
Depends On:
Blocks: IoT
TreeView+ depends on / blocked
 
Reported: 2018-05-21 14:19 UTC by Marcelo Ricardo Leitner
Modified: 2020-10-23 14:32 UTC (History)
20 users (show)

Fixed In Version:
Doc Type: If docs needed, set a value
Doc Text:
Clone Of:
Environment:
Last Closed: 2020-10-23 14:32:08 UTC
Type: Bug
Embargoed:

Attachments (Terms of Use)

Description Marcelo Ricardo Leitner 2018-05-21 14:19:50 UTC 
Description of problem:
(Unused) firmwares use too much disk space.

$ rpm -qi iwl7260-firmware
Name        : iwl7260-firmware
Epoch       : 1
Version     : 25.30.13.0
Release     : 83.fc28.1
Architecture: noarch
Install Date: seg 21 mai 2018 10:35:46 -03
Group       : Unspecified
Size        : 59429660

That's nearly 60MB in wifi firmwards!

Meanwhile, if I compress these with xz, I get them down to:
$ du -sc iwlwifi
11252   iwlwifi

11MB, 16% of the original.

Version-Release number of selected component (if applicable):
4.16.3-301.fc28.x86_64

How reproducible:
Always
Comment 1 Hans de Goede 2018-05-21 15:31:23 UTC 
Erm AFAIK the kernel's builtin firmware loader does not support loading compressed firmwares, so I don't think this is doable atm.
Comment 2 Marcelo Ricardo Leitner 2018-05-21 15:56:58 UTC 
That may very well be the case. I have no info on whether it is already supported or not.
Comment 3 David Woodhouse 2018-05-21 18:36:29 UTC 
We do have zlib in the kernel though, and/or could happily fall back the the userspace loader for *some* images...
Comment 4 Hans de Goede 2018-05-21 19:02:00 UTC 
(In reply to David Woodhouse from comment #3)
> We do have zlib in the kernel though, and/or could happily fall back the the
> userspace loader for *some* images...

I've been involved in some upstream firmware loader discussions and upstream really sees the userspace helper as obsolete. Not that they are going to kill it anytime soon, but still.
Comment 5 Jan Kurik 2018-08-14 10:56:16 UTC 
This bug appears to have been reported against 'rawhide' during the Fedora 29 development cycle.
Changing version to '29'.
Comment 6 Ben Cotton 2019-10-31 20:17:04 UTC 
This message is a reminder that Fedora 29 is nearing its end of life.
Fedora will stop maintaining and issuing updates for Fedora 29 on 2019-11-26.
It is Fedora's policy to close all bug reports from releases that are no longer
maintained. At that time this bug will be closed as EOL if it remains open with a
Fedora 'version' of '29'.

Package Maintainer: If you wish for this bug to remain open because you
plan to fix it in a currently maintained version, simply change the 'version' 
to a later Fedora version.

Thank you for reporting this issue and we are sorry that we were not 
able to fix it before Fedora 29 is end of life. If you would still like 
to see this bug fixed and are able to reproduce it against a later version 
of Fedora, you are encouraged  change the 'version' to a later Fedora 
version prior this bug is closed as described in the policy above.

Although we aim to fix as many bugs as possible during every release's 
lifetime, sometimes those efforts are overtaken by events. Often a 
more recent Fedora release includes newer upstream software that fixes 
bugs or makes them obsolete.
Comment 7 Peter Robinson 2019-11-01 07:59:03 UTC 
(In reply to Hans de Goede from comment #1)
> Erm AFAIK the kernel's builtin firmware loader does not support loading
> compressed firmwares, so I don't think this is doable atm.

So as of 5.3 the upstream kernel supports this with the CONFIG_FW_LOADER_COMPRESS option.

We do have some work to do to investigate how it handles the symlinks for modules etc so we're not quite there yet but it's on my radar.
Comment 8 Peter Robinson 2020-10-23 14:32:08 UTC 
I'll be implementing this as a change in Fedora 34

*** This bug has been marked as a duplicate of bug 1888831 ***
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