Adding a new x86 image or related packages to the default x86 image

[Til Kaiser]

On 11/13/23 21:49, Daniel Golle wrote:

> On Mon, Nov 13, 2023 at 07:54:34PM +0000, Petr Štetiar wrote:
>> Paul Spooren <mail at aparcar.org> [2023-11-13 13:30:10]:
>>
>> Hi,
>>
>>> How about we follow the approach of Alpine Linux[1] and offer a standard, an extended and a virtual firmware for the x86/64 target?
>> FYI that pull request added 27 firmware ASIC blobs, thus increased x86/64
>> image from 10 MiB to 41 MiB, but actually just 1 firmware ASIC blob
>> mlxsw_spectrum-13.2010.1006.mfa2 (1.6MiB) is needed, so I would instead recommend to
>> fix that mlx firmware package and call it a day?
> Thanks for pointing this out, increasing the default image by 1.6MiB is
> bearable on x86 and that alone does not justify the introduction of
> device specific images imho.
Greetings,

First of all, I am sorry for the problems caused by the commit I made
back then.

Unfortunately, there are three more problems:
First, the kmod-leds-mlxcpld module cannot be probed during boot on
other x86 devices, resulting in the following error message:
[    8.531720] kmodloader: 1 module could not be probed
[    8.532613] kmodloader: - leds-mlxcpld - 0

Second, only the firmware files for the Spectrum-1 Series (SN2XXX) have
been added so far. Originally, we had plans to add the firmware files
for the Spectrum-2, -3, and -4 Series as well. The current Spectrum-4
Series firmware files are even 8MB big (although it seems they are only
supported from Kernel version 6.2 onward).

And last, Mellanox doesn't even recommend the firmware file flashed by
the driver:
https://github.com/Mellanox/mlxsw/wiki/5.15-Release-notes#supported-firmware.
So you should actually flash another one, which means we would
theoretically need two firmware files for each Spectrum Series.
But I haven't run into problems yet with the one the driver flashed.

I think removing the packages from the default x86 is the best solution
for now, so they must be manually added while configuring the image.
Later, they could be still added back to the appropriate target, if
there might be a better solution.
I also just opened a pull request (#13981) regarding that.

Kind regards
Til