Dne 02. 03. 20 v 12:02 Hans de Goede napsal(a):
Hi Jaroslav,
Thank you for starting a discussion about this, we really need
to get this sorted out soon-ish as a lot of users are reporting
broken audio with 5.5.x because of the missing SOF firmware.
On 3/2/20 11:10 AM, Jaroslav Kysela wrote:
Hi all,
I would like you to introduce the situation with the Intel's Sound Open
Firmware. We have finally a stable version of the driver in the Fedora kernel
(5.5.7), so it's time to discuss this.
The issue is that Intel need to deal with three type of files. The first
file is the firmware (binary instruction blob which is executed in DSP, suffix
.ri). The second file is the topology and configuration for the ALSA's ASoC
core / SOF driver (suffix .tplg). Those both files are loaded via the firmware
load calls from the kernel. The names for those files are determined using the
hardware probe. The .ri files are platform (Broadwell etc.) dependent. The
topology files might differ more (HDMI configuration, codec configuration etc.).
The third file is not loaded via the firmware call, it contains the debug
strings (SOF firmware is stripped, thus only pointers are returned through the
trace interface and there's utility sof-logger which converts those pointers
back to the strings using those .ldc files). It's just for the debugging
purposes and for the normal operation, it is not used at all.
The last piece is the signing. Intel has a secure mechanism which is
activated in DSP, so DSP doesn't accept the unsigned firmware, if the hardware
vendor wants (and they usually wants this security). So, although, the SOF
firmware is being developed as open source, we cannot do own modifications,
because we don't have the signing keys. Of course, there is open hardware where
the public keys are used (like UP^2 or some Chromebooks). But Lenovo, Dell and
others requires firmware signed by Intel.
Personally, I'm trying to convince Intel's people to release the stable
signed firmware files to linux-firmware, but so far, I have not been successful
so far. My opinion is that the tested and verified binary topology files should
belong to the linux-firmware, too. Intel do not agree on this (distributions
should compile the topology binaries from the sources). Unfortunately, the
topology sources are not distributed separately from the SOF firmware, so we
need to deal with the whole SOF tree.
For Fedora, I'm packaging the SOF firmware, topology and debug (.ldc)
bundle (https://www.alsa-project.org/files/pub/misc/sof/) via the alsa-firmware
package for now (this package is not installed by default which causes another
bug iteration 'install this package' for users). Note that this is not in the
upstream alsa-firmware tar ball. It's an extra thing.
The last activity from the Intel is the sof-bin repository:
https://github.com/thesofproject/sof-bin/tree/stable-v1.4.2 . It's probably a
good step forward to have this reference, but it's outside the linux-firmware
repository. I don't know if they want to mirror this to linux-firmware.
The objective: Fedora/RHEL users should have sound available after the
initial installation, thus we need to find the way to add those files to
linux-firmware or install alsa-firmware package by default. Maybe, the best way
will be to create another alsa-sof-bin package for the Intel's sof-bin releases
and install it by default like iwl*-firmware files for their WiFi chips.
Since the SOF firmware files have a separate upstream I think
that creating a separate alsa-sof-bin (*) package is probably
the best approach, at least for now since upstream does not
seem to be moving to adding the signed DSP firmware files to
linux-firmware anytime soon.
As for where the topology files go, inside alsa-sof-firmware or
inside alsa-ucm, both need to be installed for things to work
anyways, so I will leave that up to you.
The topology files are bundled in sof-bin, too. Intel does some CI tests with
them, so I'd prefer to keep them with the DSP firmware files.
If you can create such a package I would be happy to do the package
review ASAP and then we can add a Requires for this to the kernel-core
pkgs so that users will get it automatically when they install the
next kernel update.
The review request: https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=1809303
If accepted, I should probably add 'Conflicts: alsa-firmware <= 1.2.1-5'
line and release alsa-firmware 1.2.1-6 without the SOF firmware files.
Regards,
Hans
p.s.
I guess if we go the also-sof-firmware pkg route we should
coordinate the bodhi bits with the kernel-update which add
the Requires, putting both the new pkg and that kernel update
in a single bodhi update.
*) I'm not sure I like alsa-sof-bin, I know there is more then
just firmware in there, but from a user's pov I think firmware
is much clearer then bin, bin makes me think tools / ELF binaries.
So I would prefer alsa-sof-firmware (just my 2 cents).
Yes, I also don't like sof-bin name so much. The alsa-sof-firmware looks much
better.
Jaroslav
--
Jaroslav Kysela <[email protected]>
Linux Sound Maintainer; ALSA Project; Red Hat, Inc.
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