linux-kernel - Re: Intel Microcode loader, tg3 driver, and the -rc8-mmotd New World Order firmware...

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Date:	Thu, 03 Jul 2008 11:30:29 +0100
From:	David Woodhouse <dwmw2@...radead.org>
To:	Valdis.Kletnieks@...edu
Cc:	Tigran Aivazian <tigran@...azian.fsnet.co.uk>,
	Andrew Morton <akpm@...ux-foundation.org>,
	linux-kernel@...r.kernel.org, jonathan@...masters.org,
	Shaohua Li <shaohua.li@...el.com>, greg@...ah.com,
	Kay Sievers <kay.sievers@...y.org>, arjan@...radead.org
Subject: Re: Intel Microcode loader, tg3 driver, and the -rc8-mmotd New
	World Order firmware...

On Thu, 2008-07-03 at 06:17 -0400, Valdis.Kletnieks@...edu wrote:
> On Thu, 03 Jul 2008 10:23:48 BST, David Woodhouse said:
> 
> > The recent firmware changes haven't modified this. The important change
> > seems to have been here (in 2006):
> > 
> > http://git.kernel.org/?p=linux/kernel/git/torvalds/linux-2.6.git;a=commitdiff;h=a30a6a2c
> 
> Aha. That's the part I was missing. :)
> 
> From the changelog for that commit, Shaohua Li wrote:
> 
> "with the changes, we should put all intel-ucode/xx-xx-xx microcode files
> into the firmware dir (I had a tool to split previous big data file into
> small one and later we will release new style data file).  The init script
> should be changed to ..."
> 
> And apparently I got stuck between the unreleased tool to split the file,
> and the release of the new style data file.

That 'new style' data file is just the binary output of the
microcode_ctl tool. The kernel is still capable of finding the section
it requires, when fed the whole blob.

> Anyhow, it appears the firmware_request() was just a bullet loaded in the
> chamber waiting for me to pull the trigger 2 years later by setting
> CONFIG_FIRMWARE_IN_KERNEL=n :)

No, the recent firmware changes haven't modified this. The
FIRMWARE_IN_KERNEL option makes no difference here.

> The behavior is explained, and presumably Intel will eventually release
> a method of getting the new-format bits, and all will be right with the
> world (or at least this part of it.. ;)

Some would say that Intel already released a method for making it work,
in the form of the email to which you're replying... does that udev
configuration not work for you?

-- 
dwmw2

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