linux-image v4.4.0-93.116 requires linux-fimrware v1.157.11 to make intel BT work

[Andy Whitcroft]

On Fri, May 04, 2018 at 10:58:38AM +0800, AceLan Kao wrote:

> We got a bug report from our customer that BT fails to work after user
> upgrades the kernel.
> The error message is BT can't find its firmware
>    bluetooth hci0: Direct firmware load for intel/ibt-12-16.sfi failed
> with error -2
> 
> After checking the kernel code and found this commit, it changes the
> firmware filename abi number from 11 to ver.hw_variant and
> ver.hw_variant is equal to 12.
> 
> commit 8f407efdd8c81240fd95847c43ec901ff595764c
> Author: Tedd Ho-Jeong An <tedd.an at intel.com>
> Date: Tue Jul 25 13:57:44 2017 +0800
> 
>     Bluetooth: Replace constant hw_variant from Intel Bluetooth
> firmware filename
> 
> And the ABI 12 firmware was introduced after linux-firmware v1.157.11
> by below commit.
> 
> commit 920c006162714217f4f5ce2a740e295ecb53e64b
> Author: Tedd Ho-Jeong An <tedd.an at intel.com>
> Date:   Wed Jul 6 11:44:56 2016 -0700
> 
>    linux-firmware: Fix the filename for WsP to align with device HW_VARIANT
> 
> To prevent this kind of issue from happening, I'm wondering could we
> make linux-image v4.4.0-93.116+ dependent on linux-fimrware v1.157.11+
> Thanks.

We can in principle make later versions of the kernel depend on later
versions of the linux-firmware package.  This introduces unfortuanate
maintenance issues for backports so we try and avoid it.  We also cannot
change those older versions of the kernel as they are already released.

The versions you are mentioning here both anchient.  The kernel is now
at -127 and linux-firmware at .18.  How are they ending up with a system
with such an old linux-firmware version and a new kernel.  I would have
expected newer versions than those even on the most recent install media.

-apw