Re: [PATCH] firmware: maintain a firmware list

[Danilo Krummrich]

(Cc: driver-core; please make sure to Cc all relevant mailing lists)

On Wed Jul 15, 2026 at 3:13 PM CEST, Corentin Labbe wrote:
> From: Corentin LABBE <clabbe@xxxxxxxxxxxx>
>
> Checking if some firmware is missing need to check dmesg for error message,
> and on some machine this information could be lost since dmesg uses a ring buffer.
> Having the list of all firmware requests is useful in many situations,
> like selecting the minimal list when doing some buildroot config
> or reducing the size of linux-firmware on gentoo via saveconfig.

The proposed implementation aside, I don't see why this needs a new kernel
interface.

  - Why can't you use 'modinfo -F firmware' for all compiled modules?

  - Don't you have a journal persisting the dmesg logs?

  - Why can't you use kprobe_event on the kernel command line if you really need
    a runtime trace?

Untested, but something like

	kprobe_event=p:fw_req,_request_firmware,name=+0(%si):string

should work I think.

Thanks,
Danilo