Cleaning up RadeonSI installation [SOLVED]

depontius · Advocate Joined: 05 May 2004 Posts: 3509

I have a rather old Kaveri installation, which has been working quite nicely from day-1. Things have caught up with me, and I think it's time that I have to change some things.

1 - I'm using "radeon-ucode", which is masked, and I know I should be using "linux-firmware" instead. Is it really as simple as "emerge -C radeon-ucode && emerge linux-firmware"? In other words, does the latter drop the relevant firmware files in the same place as the former?

2 - I believe I'm bundling the firmware into the kernel, even though I'm building "radeon" as a module. I suspect that's because I misinterpreted the instructions way-back-when, but it's been working. Still, I'd rather not, if I don't have to. As I look at my kernel config, I see:

NeddySeagoon · Posted: Tue Dec 05, 2017 2:07 pm Post subject:

depontius,

linux-firmware and radeon-ucode both install into /lib/firmware, so its just emerge -C radeon-ucode && emerge linux-firmware as you say.
You get a lot of extra firmware with linux-firmware. If that bothers you, you ran configure it out for subsequent installs.

CONFIG_EXTRA_FIRMWARE= and CONFIG_EXTRA_FIRMWARE_DIR= are only required if the corresponding module is built into the kernel.
The firmware must be available when the module is initialised.
Built in gets you an earlier framebuffer console but that's the only advantage.
Its not an error to include firmware in the kernel that you don't actually need. Its just bloat.

If the kernel module is built in, you should really rebuild your kernel after emerge -C radeon-ucode && emerge linux-firmware just to make sure it all sill works.
Otherwise you will find out at the next kernel update that it doesn't and you will have forgotten about the switch. :)

I think that the make firmware target has been removed in the kernel Makefile, so genkernel will need a fix if it calls that.

I'm on amdgpu with the new shiny stack in 4.15.0-rc1 but I have a Polaris 11 based graphics card.
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depontius · Advocate Joined: 05 May 2004 Posts: 3509

No problems with "emerge -C radeon-ucode && emerge linux-firmware". Worked like a champ. At the same time, I'd been having trouble with the stable genernel building 4.14+ kernels. I moved to a newer genkernel - which also required linux-firmware, by the way - and got 4.14.3 built and running. There are any number of "deferred maintenance" items I've been postponing, and I'm trying to get those all cleared out - then I'll update to the 17.0 profile.

I spoke too soon. "emerge @preserved-rebuild" just failed. I was also trying to move to firefox-57, which required a new llvm, clang, and mesa. That went OK, but there was a "preserved rebuild" left after, and when I try to run that the mesa compile fails. From my search, this looks like an llvm-5.0.0 problem - I'm surprised that this showed up in places other than Gentoo. Seems to me that firefox-57 and mesa-17.1 can't be on the same system, or perhaps it's USE dependent. Anyway, tonight I'll try the new firefox, and if I really like it there is one newer level of llvm, and maybe that will fix it. Otherwise I'll take that stuff all back to stable.
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