linux-kernel - Re: [Ksummit-2008-discuss] RFC: Moving firmware blobs out of the kernel.

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Message-ID: <s5habi8ce51.wl%tiwai@suse.de>
Date:	Fri, 30 May 2008 11:52:42 +0200
From:	Takashi Iwai <tiwai@...e.de>
To:	"Yinghai Lu" <yhlu.kernel@...il.com>
Cc:	"David Miller" <davem@...emloft.net>, matthew@....cx,
	arjan@...ux.intel.com, greg@...ah.com,
	James.Bottomley@...senpartnership.com,
	ksummit-2008-discuss@...ts.linux-foundation.org,
	dwmw2@...radead.org, linux-kernel@...r.kernel.org
Subject: Re: [Ksummit-2008-discuss] RFC: Moving firmware blobs out of the kernel.

At Thu, 29 May 2008 14:57:38 -0700,
Yinghai Lu wrote:
> 
> On Thu, May 29, 2008 at 2:31 PM, David Miller <davem@...emloft.net> wrote:
> > From: "Yinghai Lu" <yhlu.kernel@...il.com>
> > Date: Thu, 29 May 2008 13:55:16 -0700
> >
> >> driver should check fw version...
> >
> > This alone is not a reason to rip the firmware out into a seperate
> > tree.  And I am absolutely not convinced that the cases where this
> > matters all universally even use firmware versions.
> >
> > I've installed the wrong ipw2200 on several occaisions.
> >
> > Furthermore, it's about distributing what works with what it's meant
> > to work with.  With this seperate scheme, I can still link in the
> > wrong firmware file (the driver doesn't check the firmware version
> > until it executes) and the driver won't work.  So this moves the
> > validation to run time, which users typically don't appreciate.
> 
> I agree. I hate to have two klibc (one for 32 bit, and one for 64bit)
> to for initramfs to load FW for qlogic...
> 
> dwmw2 's new patches to put all fw in /firmware, and built them into
> kernel could avoid that...
> 
> and could make the build process to check fw version to match with
> driver in different kernel version later...

OTOH, it doesn't give you any error at build time even if you forget
to put a firmware image beforehand.  The kernel continues to look for
a non-existing external firmware file.  In the old code, this can't
happen.

It's just a small drawback, and I still like the idea very well,
though.


Takashi
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