linux-kernel - Re: [bug?] tg3: Failed to load firmware "tigon/tg3

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Date:	Thu, 3 Jul 2008 22:52:36 +0200
From:	"Rafael J. Wysocki" <rjw@...k.pl>
To:	David Woodhouse <dwmw2@...radead.org>
Cc:	Valdis.Kletnieks@...edu, Theodore Tso <tytso@....edu>,
	Jeff Garzik <jeff@...zik.org>, Hugh Dickins <hugh@...itas.com>,
	Andrew Morton <akpm@...ux-foundation.org>,
	KOSAKI Motohiro <kosaki.motohiro@...fujitsu.com>,
	mchan@...adcom.com, linux-kernel@...r.kernel.org,
	linux-mm@...ck.org, netdev@...r.kernel.org
Subject: Re: [bug?] tg3: Failed to load firmware "tigon/tg3_tso.bin"

On Thursday, 3 of July 2008, David Woodhouse wrote:
> On Thu, 2008-07-03 at 15:31 -0400, Valdis.Kletnieks@...edu wrote:
> > On Thu, 03 Jul 2008 19:56:02 BST, David Woodhouse said:
> > 
> > > They had to 'make oldconfig' and then actually _choose_ to say 'no' to
> > > an option which is fairly clearly documented, that they are the
> > > relatively unusual position of wanting to have said 'yes' to. You're
> > > getting into Aunt Tillie territory, when you complain about that.
> > 
> > Note that some of us chose 'no' because we *thought* that we already *had*
> > everything in /lib/firmware that we needed (in my case, the iwl3945 wireless
> > firmware and the Intel cpu microcode).  The first that I realized that
> > the tg3 *had* firmware was when I saw the failure message, because before
> > that, the binary blob was inside the kernel.  And then, it wasn't trivially
> > obvious how to get firmware loaded if the tg3 driver was builtin rather
> > than a module.
> > 
> > And based on some of the other people who apparently got bit by this same
> > exact behavior change on this same exact "builtin but no firmware in kernel"
> > config with this same exact driver, it's obvious that one of two things is true:
> > 
> > 1) Several of the highest-up maintainers are Aunt Tillies.
> > or
> > 2) This is sufficiently subtle and complicated that far more experienced
> > people than Aunt Tillie will Get It Very Wrong.
> 
> Not really. It's just a transitional thing. As you said, you know
> perfectly well that modern Linux drivers like iwl3945 handle their
> firmware separately through request_firmware() rather than including it
> in unswappable memory in the static kernel. We're just updating some of
> the older drivers to match.
> 
> I've often managed to configure a kernel which doesn't boot, when I've
> updated and not paid attention to the questions which 'oldconfig' asks
> me. It's fairly easy to do. But I don't advocate that 'allyesconfig'
> should be the default, just in case someone needs one of the options...
> 
> But as I said, I'm content to let Linus make that decision. In the
> meantime, I'd prefer to get back to the simple business of updating
> drivers to use request_firmware() as they should, and have maintainers
> actually respond to the _patches_ rather than refusing to even look at
> the code changes because they disagree with the default setting for the
> CONFIG_FIRMWARE_IN_KERNEL option.

Hm, well, but if the driver in question is in a module, then whether or not
this option is set really doesn't matter, does it?

Rafael
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