gl-mt2500-v2: stop shipping Airoha firmware in the BSP

[igorpecovnik]

What is broken

Every Gl-mt2500-v2 image build fails when dpkg unpacks the BSP:

dpkg: error processing archive armbian-bsp-cli-gl-mt2500-v2-edge_26.11.0-trunk.44_arm64...deb (--unpack):
 trying to overwrite '/lib/firmware/airoha/EthMD32.dm.bin',
 which is also in package armbian-firmware (26.11.0-trunk.44)

Seen in armbian/ci run 34548029496 (Gl-mt2500-v2_trixie_edge_6.16.y_minimal).

Why

Two packages started claiming the same paths, six days apart:

date	event
2026-09-04	#10598 adds this board, whose config downloads airoha/EthMD32.{dm,DSP}.bin into the bsp-cli package
2026-09-10	armbian/firmware 2a9e1c19 — "airoha: add EN8811H 2.5G PHY firmware" — adds the same two files to armbian-firmware

armbian-firmware is installed first, so the BSP unpack is the one that dies. dpkg will not let two packages own a path, and neither declares a Replaces:.

Nothing was wrong with the board config when it was written — the firmware simply moved into the shared package six days later.

Fix

Drop the whole download hook: both the firmware and the licence text.

• armbian-firmware provides the firmware now.
• The licence belongs with whoever ships the blobs, not with a board package that no longer does.
• It also removes this board's build-time dependency on a GitLab API endpoint (two curl fetches plus sha256 checks that had to be kept in step with an external repo).

The initramfs hook is unchanged and still does add_firmware "airoha/EthMD32.dm.bin" / .DSP.bin; those files now come from armbian-firmware, which is installed before the BSP, so the hook still resolves them.

Net: 8 insertions, 30 deletions.

gl-mt2500-v2 is the only board config that shipped airoha firmware (grep -rln airoha config/boards/), so nothing else needs the same treatment.

Two follow-ups, deliberately not in here

1. armbian/firmware ships the EN8811H blobs without a LICENSE.airoha (it is not in that repo's LICENSES/). Since this board package no longer carries it either, the licence text is now absent from images. Adding it to armbian/firmware alongside the blobs would be the right home.
2. The initramfs hook calls add_firmware without || true, whereas board: add Banana Pi R3 Mini #10678 (BPi R3 Mini) uses || true for the same two files. Now that the firmware comes from a separate package, a system without armbian-firmware would fail update-initramfs on every kernel upgrade rather than warn. Worth aligning.

Signed-off-by: Igor Pecovnik igor@armbian.com

[coderabbitai]

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ℹ️ Recent review info

⚙️ Run configuration

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Plan: Advanced

Run ID: c6374bc2-9f60-4667-b3a6-4549d070e9c1

📥 Commits

Reviewing files that changed from the base of the PR and between 7c1bb29 and 6940d63.

📒 Files selected for processing (1)

• config/boards/gl-mt2500-v2.csc

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📝 Walkthrough

Walkthrough

The GL-MT2500 v2 board configuration no longer downloads EN8811H firmware blobs. It retains license retrieval and relies on the armbian-firmware package for firmware installation.

Changes

Airoha firmware packaging

Layer / File(s)	Summary
Update firmware source handling config/boards/gl-mt2500-v2.csc	The board hook removes EN8811H firmware downloads and SHA-256 validation. It continues to create the license destination and fetch the Airoha license.

Priority: ➖ Normal

Estimated code review effort: 2 (Simple) | ~10 minutes

Change: Bug fix

Suggested reviewers: jiay-shi

Merge Risk: ⚪ Minimal · up to 6940d

The change resolves the package ownership conflict without leaving an identified firmware packaging or initramfs regression.

🚥 Pre-merge checks | ✅ 5

✅ Passed checks (5 passed)

Check name	Status	Explanation
Description Check	✅ Passed	Check skipped - CodeRabbit’s high-level summary is enabled.
Title check	✅ Passed	The title clearly and concisely describes the main change: the GL-MT2500 v2 BSP no longer ships Airoha firmware.
Docstring Coverage	✅ Passed	No functions found in the changed files to evaluate docstring coverage. Skipping docstring coverage check. Docstring coverage is scoped to functions touched by this diff. Analyzed 0 functions across 0…
Linked Issues check	✅ Passed	Check skipped because no linked issues were found for this pull request.
Out of Scope Changes check	✅ Passed	Check skipped because no linked issues were found for this pull request.

✨ Finishing Touches

🧪 Generate unit tests (beta)

• Create PR with unit tests
• Commit unit tests in branch fix/gl-mt2500-v2-firmware-conflict

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