[Bug 2104539] Re: About 35% of intel-microcode firmware are duplicate files by disk usage

[Henrique de Moraes Holschuh]

Hello,

FWIW, I am considering changing the way *Debian* handles this (Ubuntu
might or not want to follow suit).  Since Debian does not support late-
loading of microcode anymore, I am considering to change intel-microcode
to ship *only* a /usr/share/misc/intel-ucode_<date>.bin file.   There
would be *nothing* in /ib/firmware/intel-ucode/ anymore [*]

This takes care of the duplication caused by microcode data files with
extended microcode signature tables.

There is an alternative: one could replace identical data files with
symlinks or hardlinks at package build time.  It is also on the table.

[*] anyone that needs late-loading of microcode should be capable enough
to run iucode-tool -K to recreate /lib/firmware/intel-ucode, or I could
have that as a configurable item of low priority, default disabled.  But
it doesn't seem worth the effort at first glance.   Alternatively, I can
finish and ship the next iucode_tool version, which can detect "late-
loading allowed" metadata Intel introduced sometime ago, and create
/lib/firmware entries only for those.

Any thoughts on this ?

-- 
  Henrique de Moraes Holschuh <hmh at debian.org>

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https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/2104539

Title:
  About 35% of intel-microcode firmware are duplicate files by disk
  usage

Status in intel-microcode package in Ubuntu:
  Confirmed

Bug description:
  5.7MB of 16MB are duplicate files in /lib/firmware/intel-ucode/ from
  package intel-microcode

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