PSA Archlinux and Archlinux ARM linux-firmware problems

[pudge]

Just a heads up.
See this Archlinux Announcement:

[url]https://archlinux.org/news/linux-firmware-2025061312fe085f-5-upgrade-requires-manual-intervention/[/url]

I have used this fix for Archlinux ARM and it works well.

[technosf]

The announcement says:

With 20250613.12fe085f-5, we split our firmware into several vendor-focused packages. linux-firmware is now an empty package depending on our default set of firmware.

Unfortunately, this coincided with upstream reorganizing the symlink layout of the NVIDIA firmware, resulting in a situation that Pacman cannot handle. When attempting to upgrade from 20250508.788aadc8-2 or earlier, you will see the following errors:

linux-firmware-nvidia: /usr/lib/firmware/nvidia/ad103 exists in filesystem
linux-firmware-nvidia: /usr/lib/firmware/nvidia/ad104 exists in filesystem
linux-firmware-nvidia: /usr/lib/firmware/nvidia/ad106 exists in filesystem
linux-firmware-nvidia: /usr/lib/firmware/nvidia/ad107 exists in filesystem

To progress with the system upgrade, first remove linux-firmware, then reinstall it as part of the upgrade:

# pacman -Rdd linux-firmware
# pacman -Syu linux-firmware

-------------------------

I didn't get that error, but I was concerned, given that linux-firmware is now a metapackage, Syu wanted to do the following installs:

Packages (10) linux-firmware-amdgpu-20250613.12fe085f-6 linux-firmware-atheros-20250613.12fe085f-6
linux-firmware-broadcom-20250613.12fe085f-6 linux-firmware-intel-20250613.12fe085f-6
linux-firmware-mediatek-20250613.12fe085f-6 linux-firmware-nvidia-20250613.12fe085f-6
linux-firmware-other-20250613.12fe085f-6 linux-firmware-radeon-20250613.12fe085f-6
linux-firmware-realtek-20250613.12fe085f-6 linux-firmware-20250613.12fe085f-6

I would suggest just installing the package you need - in my case I use the linux-firmware-marvell package and I'll now uninstall the metapackage.

[RandyOrion]

Can confirm that you can only install the firmware you need.

I uninstalled linux-firmware meta package with 'pacman -Rdd linux-firmware', and installed the firmware I need with 'pacman -Syu linux-firmware-broadcom'. After that my RPI boots normally.

[graysky]

Just FYI - if you're using linux-rpi or linux-rpi-16k you don't need linux-firmware-broadcom