FS#72899 - [linux-firmware] compress firmware files

Attached to Project: Arch Linux
Opened by Tobias Powalowski (tpowa) - Thursday, 02 December 2021, 08:40 GMT
Last edited by Andreas Radke (AndyRTR) - Tuesday, 08 February 2022, 07:17 GMT
Task Type Feature Request
Category Packages: Core
Status Closed
Assigned To Laurent Carlier (lordheavy)
Architecture All
Severity Low
Priority Normal
Reported Version
Due in Version Undecided
Due Date Undecided
Percent Complete 100%
Votes 3
Private No

Details

Now that mkinitcpio supports compressed firmware files, time to compress them to save space.

# compress firmware with xz, wait for mkinitcpio support to be implemented
# #FS 72263
find ${pkgdir}/usr/lib/firmware -type f -execdir xz -C crc32 -z {} \+
This task depends upon

Closed by  Andreas Radke (AndyRTR)
Tuesday, 08 February 2022, 07:17 GMT
Reason for closing:  Implemented
Comment by nl6720 (nl6720) - Thursday, 02 December 2021, 10:01 GMT
This will break symlinks that https://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/firmware/linux-firmware.git/tree/copy-firmware.sh creates.
Comment by nl6720 (nl6720) - Thursday, 02 December 2021, 10:14 GMT
There's an unfinished patch from 2021-02:20210123102625.589472-1-pbrobinson@gmail.com/T/"> https://lore.kernel.org/linux-firmware/20210123102625.589472-1-pbrobinson@gmail.com/T/
Someone may want to ping the patch author, or alternatively finish the patch themselves (and send it).
Comment by Andreas Radke (AndyRTR) - Wednesday, 19 January 2022, 19:28 GMT
Please test 20220119.0c6a7b3-1 with compression implemented using the patch taken from Fedora.
Comment by John (gee) - Monday, 07 February 2022, 13:46 GMT
Could this be made optional or compressed with a faster algorithm like LZ4/ZSTD? As it is, it seems a net negative for people that don't care about space/use a compressed FS.

Thanks!
Comment by Alexander Schnaidt (Namarrgon) - Monday, 07 February 2022, 13:51 GMT
XZ is the only algorithm that the kernel supports. What is the "net negative" you're talking about?
Comment by Tobias Powalowski (tpowa) - Monday, 07 February 2022, 14:09 GMT
zstd will propably be merged in kernel 5.17
Comment by John (gee) - Monday, 07 February 2022, 21:54 GMT
Oh I see, Thanks! (I always forget that it's not because a compressor is used in some part of the kernel, that it can be used in others.)

As for the negative, well decompression speed of XZ isn't that good compared to the competition.
Comment by Andreas Radke (AndyRTR) - Tuesday, 08 February 2022, 07:17 GMT
There's currently no compression alternative but xz still save a lot of disk space. Once zstd or lz4 will be supported in all our kernels we might use such a fast compression algo.

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