False-positive missing-firmware warnings for devices not present on the machine

False-positive missing-firmware warnings for devices not present on the machine

[alan.hovgaard]

Hello linux-firmware maintainers and Linux kernel maintainers,

I am an Arch Linux user writing about a user-facing warning that
appears on every kernel upgrade. It is driven by MODULE_FIRMWARE
metadata on in-tree modules, then printed by the distro initramfs
generator (mkinitcpio) as:

    WARNING: Possibly missing firmware for module: 'ast'
    WARNING: Possibly missing firmware for module: 'xhci_pci_renesas'
    WARNING: Possibly missing firmware for module: 'qla2xxx'
    WARNING: Possibly missing firmware for module: 'qed'
    WARNING: Possibly missing firmware for module: 'aic94xx'
    WARNING: Possibly missing firmware for module: 'bfa'
    WARNING: Possibly missing firmware for module: 'wd719x'
    WARNING: Possibly missing firmware for module: 'qla1280'

None of that hardware is in this computer. I find it a strange
antipattern to report missing firmware for devices that are not
present. Treating that as a WARNING is, in my view, plain wrong and
misleading. Why on earth is the default to warn about hardware that
is not even in the machine?

Machine: Lenovo Legion Pro 5 16IRX8 (laptop)
GPU:     Intel Raptor Lake-S UHD + NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4070 Max-Q
USB:     Intel 700 Series xHCI
Storage: Samsung NVMe
Ethernet: Realtek RTL8111
Wi-Fi:   Intel CNVi

  Module              What it is                         On this PC
  ------------------  ---------------------------------
------------------------------------------
  ast                 ASPEED BMC/IPMI server graphics    No -- Intel
UHD + RTX 4070
  xhci_pci_renesas    Renesas USB 3.0 xHCI firmware      No -- USB is
Intel 700-series xHCI
  qla2xxx             QLogic Fibre Channel HBA           No
  qed                 QLogic FastLinQ enterprise NIC     No --
ethernet is Realtek RTL8111
  aic94xx             Adaptec SAS/SATA RAID              No
  bfa                 Brocade Fibre Channel HBA          No
  wd719x              Old Western Digital SCSI HBA       No
  qla1280             Old QLogic SCSI HBA                No

None of those modules are loaded. lspci shows no matching devices.

I understand MODULE_FIRMWARE lists every blob a driver might request
for any supported device variant, not "firmware required on this
host." Distros then treat that list as a checklist when they pack
generic storage/USB/GPU modules into an initramfs. The result is
false-positive WARNINGs on ordinary laptops for QLogic Fibre Channel,
Brocade FC, Adaptec RAID, old SCSI cards, ASPEED BMC, and Renesas USB.

A warning should mean something is actually wrong with this machine.
I am asking for this default to change.

On the kernel / firmware-metadata side, that could mean:

  - Distinguishing required vs optional firmware in MODULE_FIRMWARE /
    modinfo, so initramfs generators can stop false-positive warnings
  - Or documenting a stable way for userspace to know that a firmware
    blob is only needed if a given PCI ID is present

I am sending the same request to the Arch mkinitcpio maintainers,
who emit the warning today. I would like the user-visible default to
stop warning about devices that are not in the computer.

Thank you,
Alan Hovgaard
Arch Linux user

Re: False-positive missing-firmware warnings for devices not present on the machine

[Genes Lists]

[-- Attachment #1.1: Type: text/plain, Size: 287 bytes --]

On 9/17/26 12:29 PM, alan.hovgaard@gmail.com wrote:
> WARNING: Possibly missing firmware for module:

I'm pretty sure this comes from Arch mkinitcpio tool when it builds an 
initrd, not from the kernel.

It does not happen when dracut is used to generate the initrd.

-- 
Gene

[-- Attachment #2: OpenPGP digital signature --]
[-- Type: application/pgp-signature, Size: 236 bytes --]