# [solved] linux-firmware: how to configure (which to select)

## equaeghe

Hi,

A recent upgrade of the linux-firmware package gave a message about configuration, i.e., how to indicate which firmware should be available.

How do I determine which should be available, can I get this from, e.g., dmesg? 

TIA,

ErikLast edited by equaeghe on Wed Jun 06, 2012 8:53 am; edited 1 time in total

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## DanneStrat

Erik,

Do you remember which devices that needed the extra firmware provided by the "linux-firmware" package? Normally you only need the extra firmware for some newer radeon graphics cards and some wireless network adapters. Maybe you installed it initially for some of the aforementioned devices?

"linux-firmware" installs it's contents to /lib/firmware/ so have a look in there to see if some files look familiar:

```
ls /lib/firmware/
```

You can identify your hardware with lsusb and lspci provided by packages "pciutils" and "usbutils".

When you know which firmware to keep, you can optionally follow the instructions from the ebuild to remove the unneeded firmware (you don't have to do this though):

* Your configuration for sys-kernel/linux-firmware-20120125 has been saved in 

 * /etc/portage/savedconfig/sys-kernel/linux-firmware-20120125 for your editing pleasure.

 * You can edit these files by hand and remerge this package with

 * USE=savedconfig to customise the configuration.

 * You can rename this file/directory to one of the following for

 * its configuration to apply to multiple versions:

 * ${PORTAGE_CONFIGROOT}/etc/portage/savedconfig/

 * [${CTARGET}|${CHOST}|""]/${CATEGORY}/[${PF}|${P}|${PN}]

 * If you are only interested in particular firmware files, edit the saved

 * configfile and remove those that you do not want.

Otherwise, just leave it as is or if you find out that you don't have any devices that require the firmware then you can unmerge "linux-firmware".

Cheers!  :Very Happy: 

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