I seek a way to determine which of the firmware (i.e. binary blobs to support hardware) my laptop actually uses.
The package that bundles the binary blobs on my distro archlinux is:
core/linux-firmware
(package size ~180MiB , installed ~730MiB in ~2500 blob files)
my laptop is very likely only using a few of those files anyway. This question is to seek out how those can be determined. Some online search has suggested to simply grep
the dmesg
for the needle firmware
(https://wiki.gentoo.org/wiki/Linux_firmware#Searching_for_loaded_firmware). While this indeed appears to provide some insight I am unsure if this is best/only/correct way. It appears to me
- the word firware appears in
dmesg
output in contextes not related to actual binary blobs - the respective kernel source code parts, have not a uniform output with regard to displaying firmware loaded information (unsure though)
[root@thinkbox ~]# dmesg | grep -i firmware [ 0.111955] Spectre V2 : Enabling Restricted Speculation for firmware calls [ 0.161877] ACPI: [Firmware Bug]: BIOS _OSI(Linux) query ignored [ 10.440450] platform regulatory.0: Direct firmware load for regulatory.db failed with error -2 [ 10.493359] i915 0000:00:02.0: [drm] Finished loading DMC firmware i915/skl_dmc_ver1_27.bin (v1.27) [ 10.581810] iwlwifi 0000:04:00.0: loaded firmware version 36.ca7b901d.0 8000C-36.ucode op_mode iwlmvm [ 10.766097] Bluetooth: hci0: Firmware revision 0.0 build 10 week 41 2018 [ 11.947004] psmouse serio2: trackpoint: IBM TrackPoint firmware: 0x0e, buttons: 3/3 [ 4855.262357] Bluetooth: hci0: Minimum firmware build 1 week 10 2014 [ 4855.268828] Bluetooth: hci0: Found device firmware: intel/ibt-11-5.sfi [ 4857.277466] Bluetooth: hci0: Waiting for firmware download to complete [ 4857.278204] Bluetooth: hci0: Firmware loaded in 1962276 usecs [ 4857.297293] Bluetooth: hci0: Firmware revision 0.0 build 10 week 41 2018 [20995.531309] Bluetooth: hci0: Minimum firmware build 1 week 10 2014 [20995.531314] Bluetooth: hci0: Found device firmware: intel/ibt-11-5.sfi [20997.352132] Bluetooth: hci0: Waiting for firmware download to complete [20997.352924] Bluetooth: hci0: Firmware loaded in 1778914 usecs [20997.370079] Bluetooth: hci0: Firmware revision 0.0 build 10 week 41 2018 [22827.736960] Bluetooth: hci0: Minimum firmware build 1 week 10 2014 [22827.737757] Bluetooth: hci0: Found device firmware: intel/ibt-11-5.sfi [22829.202536] Bluetooth: hci0: Waiting for firmware download to complete [22829.202753] Bluetooth: hci0: Firmware loaded in 1430656 usecs [22829.219920] Bluetooth: hci0: Firmware revision 0.0 build 10 week 41 2018
edit: replaced output screenshot with text copy