On Tue, Oct 7, 2025 at 10:55 AM Chris Adams <[email protected]> wrote: > > Once upon a time, Neal Gompa <[email protected]> said: > > The NVIDIA firmware API is not stable, so we have to keep multiple > > versions around for different kernels. That's a big part of the size > > blow up. > > We'd still be better to have a single firmware-only initramfs image, > even if it had to have multiple NVIDIA versions for people with those > cards. The rest of the firmware would be de-duplicated, and there'd > only be one of each version of NVIDIA, where now there are as many as 4 > (3 kernels + rescue), or really temporarily 5 (when a new kernel is > being installed).
This is not a bad idea in theory. In practice, we do have bad firmware updates, and the saving grace is that the old firmware is still in the initramfs of the old kernels. It is frustrating, but some drivers are moving more functionality from the kernel drivers into firmware. Not just Nvidia, but also AMD and others. Kernel drivers will often work with multiple firmware versions. A surprising number of "kernel bugs" have absolutely no anchor in the kernel, but the new firmware was included in the initramfs of the kernel update making it appear like a kernel issue when it is a firmware problem. Having a single firmware initramfs would make those problems much more visible, which I like. But it also gets rid of the working fallback when there is a firmware issue. Justin > -- > Chris Adams <[email protected]> > -- > _______________________________________________ > devel mailing list -- [email protected] > To unsubscribe send an email to [email protected] > Fedora Code of Conduct: > https://docs.fedoraproject.org/en-US/project/code-of-conduct/ > List Guidelines: https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Mailing_list_guidelines > List Archives: > https://lists.fedoraproject.org/archives/list/[email protected] > Do not reply to spam, report it: > https://pagure.io/fedora-infrastructure/new_issue -- _______________________________________________ devel mailing list -- [email protected] To unsubscribe send an email to [email protected] Fedora Code of Conduct: https://docs.fedoraproject.org/en-US/project/code-of-conduct/ List Guidelines: https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Mailing_list_guidelines List Archives: https://lists.fedoraproject.org/archives/list/[email protected] Do not reply to spam, report it: https://pagure.io/fedora-infrastructure/new_issue
