[Pkg-raspi-maintainers] Bug#948712: Bug#948712: raspi-firmware: Workaround to avoid postinst error on Pinebook Pro

[Paul Seelig]

Thanks for your feedback, Cyril!

On 12/13/25 13:06, Cyril Brulebois wrote:
> Paul Seelig <wmlive at users.sf.net> (2025-12-12):
>> The proposed modification consists of an additional check to verify if
>> the platfom actually is an RPI before raising an error condition just
>> because /boot/firmware is not a mount point.
> We support much more than just the Pi 4 family. You seem to have
> borrowed from a function that matches the Pi 4 family specifically
> because of cma-related requirements (having it or not having it on the
> kernel cmdline).
Just reusing the very same function that was already defined by the 
package maintainer in debian/kernel/postinst.d/z50-raspi-firmware and 
trying to avoid that pointless (for a PINE64 device) error condition.

>> On Pinebook Pro and some other PINE64 devices, /boot/firmware is
>> usually just a subdirectory and there is no need to complicate things
>> by insisting it to be a mount point.
> Why are you deploying *raspi*-firmware on PINE devices in the first
> place?
A cursory read of the full thread 
https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=948712 should easily 
make this clearer.

The very same issue applies for 
https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=1064072, where a 
Pine64 RockPro64 is affected. A closely related bug was filed via 
https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=999485 for the 
firmware-brcm80211 package.

The raspi-firmware package contains the /lib/firmware/brcm/brcmfmac434* 
blobs that are required to use the Wifi capabilities of some PINE64 
devices, including the Pinebook Pro. These files would probably be 
better positioned as part of the firmware-brcm80211 or other firmware 
package, but there appear to be some reasons that impedes this so far.

Those using a Pinebook Pro are basically "condemned" to use the 
raspi-firmware package for this blob component if we won't proper 
network connectivity in Debian. And since the raspi-fimrware package is 
designed with mostly RPI's in mind, these unfortunate postinst error 
conditions arise if used outside of the intended scope.

Discerning RPI's in the postinst scripts from other ARM devices that use 
the included firmware in different ways would very much help its wider 
user base.

Thanks!
Paul