Remove linux-firmware dependency from kernel meta packages for s390x

[Frank Heimes]

As far as we understand all firmware upgrades (and the firmware itself) is coming from the HMC on case of IBM Z and LinuxONE.
This not only incl. the CEC code, but also all the firmware for the different cards and adapters.
If this is the case (and will be in future), it would make sense for us to get rid of the linux-firmware package for s390x - this would make things leaner, reduce size and eventually increase (installation) performance ...

So please IBM can you confirm that all firmware updates (MCLs) are always done via the HMC and that is therefore the linux-firmware package is obsolete on s390x? Thx

[bugproxy (bugproxy)]

------- Comment From <email address hidden> 2020-03-17 05:36 EDT-------
Yes, all CEC, OSA, fibre channel cards will get their firmware via HMC. This is also true for the ROCE express cards.
The only thing that I do not know about is, are the NVMe cards that are provided by the customers. Not sure if we do support customer provides firmware updates for those.
But as far as I know this is extra tooling and not part of linux-firmware.
So yes, we should be able to avoid linux-firmware on s390.

(adding some people for double checking).

[bugproxy (bugproxy)]

------- Comment From <email address hidden> 2020-03-17 09:28 EDT-------
I don't know about any linux-firmware user from the PCI side. As for NVMe, on other platforms their firnware updates seem to go a different route than using the linux-firmware package.
See for example this news article about Fwupd/LVFS support for NVMe firmware.

https://phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=Fwupd-NVMe-SSD-Support-Start

[Dimitri John Ledkov (xnox)]

I think we will continue to build/ship linux-firmware package in the archive for s390x.

However, I think we want to drop the dependencies from src:linux-meta on s390x such that linux-firmware is not pulled-in or installed by default.

[Dimitri John Ledkov (xnox)]

https://lists.ubuntu.com/archives/kernel-team/2020-March/108407.html

[Frank Heimes (fheimes)]

The submitted request to the kernel teams mailing list got APPLIED.
Hence updating status to Fix Committed.

[Launchpad Janitor (janitor)]

This bug was fixed in the package linux-meta - 5.4.0.21.25

---------------
linux-meta (5.4.0.21.25) focal; urgency=medium

  * Bump ABI 5.4.0-21

  * Packaging resync (LP: #1786013)
    - [Packaging] update variants

 -- Thadeu Lima de Souza Cascardo <email address hidden> Thu, 26 Mar 2020 18:49:44 -0300

[bugproxy (bugproxy)]

------- Comment From <email address hidden> 2020-03-31 07:30 EDT-------
IBM Bugzilla status-> closed, Fix Released with focal