Missing AMD GPU firmware issue on Ubuntu 17.10

Question

While running sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get upgrade, I get the following error while upgrade process is processing triggers at the end. How to fix it?

I am on Ubuntu 17.10 default configuration. I already have installed available drivers using "Softwares and Updates".

W: Possible missing firmware /lib/firmware/amdgpu/raven_gpu_info.bin for module amdgpu
W: Possible missing firmware /lib/firmware/amdgpu/raven_rlc.bin for module amdgpu
W: Possible missing firmware /lib/firmware/amdgpu/raven_mec2.bin for module amdgpu
W: Possible missing firmware /lib/firmware/amdgpu/raven_mec.bin for module amdgpu
W: Possible missing firmware /lib/firmware/amdgpu/raven_me.bin for module amdgpu
W: Possible missing firmware /lib/firmware/amdgpu/raven_pfp.bin for module amdgpu
W: Possible missing firmware /lib/firmware/amdgpu/raven_ce.bin for module amdgpu
W: Possible missing firmware /lib/firmware/amdgpu/raven_sdma.bin for module amdgpu
W: Possible missing firmware /lib/firmware/amdgpu/raven_vcn.bin for module amdgpu

Solution

You can safely ignore those lines.

What you noticed there aren’t "errors". Instead, you’re looking at "warnings" (which you can recognize from the fact that those lines are prepended with a w).

The reason you’re seeing those warnings (and what they don’t tell you) is that all AMD graphics will now load up with llvmpipe and spit out that message (especially in development version).

Anyway, those warnings can be safely ignored.

Nota Bene: What you do not want to do is to fetch the files apt warns about from sources like people.freedesktop.org/~agd5f/radeon_ucode/raven/ as that might introduce a potential attack vector. If you embrace your personal security, don’t simply trust unknown binaries from random sources which can not be verified to be benign.

Comments

[Roel Van de Paar]

The OP asked how to fix it. This answer does not do so. I too see this message and my screen output is playing up in various ways. Being able to fix it - perhaps by resolving these warnings - would be great.

[e-sushi]

@Roel It's not meant to be fixed, which is why I reminded OP that those warnings can be safely ignored. The core of the problem is AMD not opening up their sourcecode and recent Ubuntu versions (due to the way they handle drivers) simply don't a support AMD's drivers as they used to (up until Ubuntu 16 if I'm not mistaking). My answer explains that while pointing to llvmpipe and explaining how Ubuntu now handles things. (1/2)

[e-sushi]

@roel (2/2) Long story short: if your hardware isn't supported and Ubuntu's own AMD-supporting drivers don't work for you, you can downgrade to an older (LTS) version of Ubuntu or get a GPU-card that's actively supported by Ubuntu. There's is no other way to "fix" a deprecated thing. In the end, you can thank either AMD for that since they don't open up their drivers to the Linux world like (for example) NVidia does, or you can thank Ubuntu for going "we're not interested in fighting an outdated GPU driver problem when AMD doesn't offer help and code". For details, see Ubuntu's site & docs.

[Vladimir Panteleev]

Don't actually do this. Putting trash in the filesystem just to silence some warnings is not a good idea. The presence of those files is likely to affect more than just whether those warnings are displayed - some code somewhere may notice these files are present and could attempt to load them, or prevent installing the real versions, etc.

[dw1]

Retrieving from a trusted source like git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/firmware/… should be ok