[09:13] <vic-thor> tomreyn: yes, it tells to come here to this channel to ask :)
[09:15] <vic-thor> i guess that ~ubuntu-kernel/ubuntu/+source/linux-firmware is kind of a mirror of the kernel.org's linux-firmware git. But, what creates the actual ubuntu package?
[10:19] <juergh> vic-thor, me :-)
[10:21] <juergh> vic-thor, older releases are frozen just receive individual fixes. the current devel release (kinetic) is periodically rebased onto upstream linux-firmware. we do have some additional blobs that we carry (see WHENCE.ubuntu).
[10:22] <juergh> vic-thor, note that all the packaging files are also in our repo (debian/*).
[10:23] <juergh> vic-thor, debian/README.ubuntu on kintetic branch.
[10:24] <vic-thor> thanks
[10:28] <vic-thor> im a bit confused about how all these works. If I query the modinfo --field firmware XXX, i get a list of files. a random example, if I query the mlxsw_spectrum module, i get just one file: mellanox/mlxsw_spectrum-13.2000.1886.mfa2. As far as I have followed the kernel sources, that means that's the only file the kernel (the one i've queried about) will try to load. Am I correct? If so, why having all the other files in the 
[10:28] <vic-thor> mellanox folder? Is it to support multiple kernels with just one firmware package?
[11:46] <juergh> vic-thor, for mlxsw_spectrum there are different firmware versions in the repo, for different kernel versions.
[11:47] <vic-thor> juergh: so, for a given kernel, it should stick to whatever file it says in the modinfo only
[11:48] <juergh> not necessarily. modinfo might be lying to you. you can really only tell what the kernel is loading (or tries to) by looking at the kernel log (dmesg).
[11:49] <juergh> modinfo might also give you a whole list of blobs but only one might be relevant for your specific HW. for example a GPU driver that support a range of GPUs each needing a different fw. which one gets loaded depends on your HW.
[11:50] <juergh> and sometimes modinfo doesn't list blobs because the driver doesn't advertise it (and hence is broken).
[11:51] <juergh> but still loads the fw, just doesn't list it in modinfo
[11:51] <juergh> if that makes sense
[11:56] <vic-thor> yes, i think so. The proper way to advertise it is through the MODULE_FIRMWARE macro, isn't it?
[11:58] <vic-thor> i was more worried about taking megabytes of firmware files related to a strange piece of hardware I dont even compile the kernel module about
[14:49] <juergh> yes MODULE_FIRMWARE. some drivers generate the fw name dynamically and for them it can be hard to advertise it in modinfo.