Firmware/Drivers under TruNAS Scale / Linux

[mervincm]

This topic has always confused me under TrueNAS Scale and even Linux. The hardware we run it on can have firmware. Everything from USB controllers to NICs, HBAs etc. can have firmware. TrueNAS Scale (and its core Linus OS) come with drivers and firmware. This apparently is because it is best to match the firmware and driver versions, and this way you can use hardware flashed to firmware versions other than what came with your OS. I doubt Linux flashes my physical hardware, so I assume it is doing some sort of remapping to the firmware file, not the device.

Do I have it right? If so, why do we bother with the hassle/risk associated with physical firmware flashing?

any insight is appreciated.

 

[winnielinnie]

Are you referring to "binary blobs" (used in conjunction with kernel modules) that are available to Linux distros, due to a hardware vendor keeping their firmware proprietary?

That's a different issue versus flashing the firmware directly on the HBA's chipset (which is agnostic to the operating system you've booted into.)

 

[mervincm]

you know I don't think so but ... as I said, it is something that I never really understood.

so as a first example what about CPU microcode?
I have seen it in motherboard firmware revisions like this

But I have also seen it installable via software

iucode-tool / iucode-tool · GitLab

iucode_tool is a program to manipulate microcode update collections for Intel® i686 and X86-64 system processors, and prepare them for use by the Linux kernel. Please refer to...

gitlab.com