linux-kernel - Re: Kernel Firmware

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Date:	Sun, 11 Nov 2012 16:57:42 +0800
From:	Ming Lei <tom.leiming@...il.com>
To:	"Michael D. Setzer II" <msetzerii@...il.com>
Cc:	linux-kernel@...r.kernel.org
Subject: Re: Kernel Firmware - Adding Right way??

On Sun, Nov 11, 2012 at 3:57 PM, Michael D. Setzer II
<msetzerii@...il.com> wrote:
> I've been the maintainer of the g4l project since about 2004, and
> have had issues with a few users that have hardware that requires
> firmware that isn't included in the kernel.org kernel.
>
> I want to do this the right way, since this is what it shows in the
> kernel firmware directory.
>
>
>         DO NOT ADD FIRMWARE TO THIS DIRECTORY.
>         ======================================
>
> This directory is only here to contain firmware images extracted
> from old device drivers which predate the common use of
> request_firmware().
>
> Problem is that when I manually add the missing firmware to the
> firmware directory, and add it to the list in the Makefile it works
> just fine, but I then tried to add the new firmware file directory to
> the cd it doesn't find the firmware.
>
> User reports this in dmesg.
>
> firmware 0000:04:00.0: firmware: requesting
> bnx2x/bnx2x-e2-7.2.51.0.fw
> PM: Removing info for No Bus:0000:04:00.0
> bnx2x: bnx2x_init_firmware:11647(eth0)Can't load firmware file
> bnx2x/bnx2x-e2-7.2.51.0.fw
> bnx2x: bnx2x_func_hw_init:5477(eth0)Error loading firmware
> bnx2x: bnx2x_nic_load:2136(eth0)HW init failed, aborting
>
> The firmware is download using
>
> git://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/firmware/linux-firmware.
> git
>
> and files and subdirectories are placed in the /lib/firmware
> directory except for the .git directory.
>
> So, not sure why it isn't finding the the kernel files.
>
> The options involving FIRMWARE are currently
> CONFIG_PREVENT_FIRMWARE_BUILD=y
> # CONFIG_FIRMWARE_IN_KERNEL is not set
> CONFIG_EXTRA_FIRMWARE=""
> # CONFIG_HOSTAP_FIRMWARE is not set
> CONFIG_FIRMWARE_MEMMAP=y
> # CONFIG_GOOGLE_FIRMWARE is not set
>
> The project builds all options in the kernel instead of using
> moduals since it includes a number of kernels to support various

Maybe building the driver into kernel causes your problem because
the rootfs is not ready when requesting, or the firmware is not included
into initrd.

As far as I know, now the preferred approach is to build the
driver as module for the issue, or you can introduce probe
deferral in driver to solve the problem.

> hardware and has most nics and disk adapters selected.
>
> link to the latest config file.
>
> ftp://amd64gcc.dyndns.org/bz3x6.6.config
>
> I've search over the web, and have even been communicating
> with the maintainer of the bnx2x firmware that is the issue.
>
> I'm hoping it is just some simple setting or option that needs to be
> set. Adding the 40M of firmware required increasing the ramdisk
> size for 64M to 128M to make room, but would like to have the
> firmware available for users that might need it to have the project
> work on there hardware.
>
> Thanks.
>
>
>
>
> +----------------------------------------------------------+
>   Michael D. Setzer II -  Computer Science Instructor
>   Guam Community College  Computer Center
>   mailto:mikes@...ntos.guam.net
>   mailto:msetzerii@...il.com
>   http://www.guam.net/home/mikes
>   Guam - Where America's Day Begins
>   G4L Disk Imaging Project maintainer
>   http://sourceforge.net/projects/g4l/
> +----------------------------------------------------------+
>
> http://setiathome.berkeley.edu (Original)
> Number of Seti Units Returned:  19,471
> Processing time:  32 years, 290 days, 12 hours, 58 minutes
> (Total Hours: 287,489)
>
> BOINC@...E CREDITS
> SETI        13233290.532525   |   EINSTEIN     9012033.029852
> ROSETTA      5329761.808862   |   ABC         15417521.047462
>
> --
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Thanks,
-- 
Ming Lei
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