Linux Firmware

This repository contains the Linux Firmware package for balenaOS. It is deployed as a Balena Block.

Description

This block provides the necessary firmware files for hardware support on balenaOS devices. It is intended for host OS system level use.

[!NOTE] While the balena branch contains workflows and deploy infra, the main branch is a mirror of the upstream linux-firmware repo and is force-synced regularly. Local changes to main will not persist.

Maintenance

This repository includes automated workflows for maintenance and deployment:

• Repo Sync: A daily cron job (repo-sync.yml) synchronizes the main branch and tags from the upstream repository.
• Deploy: Triggered by new tags or manually (deploy.yml). It builds and deploys the firmware to the balena_os/linux-firmware-x86 and balena_os/linux-firmware-arm fleets.

Release Lifecycle

Trigger	Release Created	Finalized
Pull Request to balena branch	✅ Yes	❌ No (draft)
Manual dispatch (default)	✅ Yes	❌ No (draft)
Manual dispatch with finalize: true	✅ Yes	✅ Yes
Repo Sync completes (new upstream tags)	✅ Yes	✅ Yes

Revisions

When manually triggering the deploy workflow, the allow-revisions input (default: true) controls behavior when a finalized release already exists for the specified firmware tag:

• allow-revisions: true — A new release (revision) is pushed regardless of existing releases.
• allow-revisions: false — No new release is created if a matching finalized release already exists.

Important

Merging changes to the balena branch does not automatically create a new release. Releases are only created when triggered by the deploy workflow—either manually or after the repo sync workflow detects new upstream tags.

Usage

This block is primarily used by balenaOS build systems.