linux-kernel - Re: [PATCH] firmware: Be a bit more verbose about direct firmware loading failure

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Date:	Thu, 12 Sep 2013 16:36:33 -0400
From:	Neil Horman <nhorman@...driver.com>
To:	Henrique de Moraes Holschuh <hmh@....eng.br>
Cc:	Ming Lei <ming.lei@...onical.com>,
	Linux Kernel Mailing List <linux-kernel@...r.kernel.org>,
	Greg Kroah-Hartman <gregkh@...uxfoundation.org>
Subject: Re: [PATCH] firmware: Be a bit more verbose about direct firmware
 loading failure

On Thu, Sep 12, 2013 at 03:46:30PM -0300, Henrique de Moraes Holschuh wrote:
> On Thu, 12 Sep 2013, Neil Horman wrote:
> > Both of these execptions should be rare, and are something the administrator
> > will want to know about, so as not to confuse the real error with the mystery
> > -ENOENT you would get if you fell back to the user mode helepr and it wansn't
> > configured on in the running kernel.
> 
> Except, of course, for Intel processor microcode updates, which are going to
> cause ENOENT on a large number of systems.
> 
> This will generate a large number of questions by users on the distro MLs.
> 
> However, IMHO this is *not* a reason to refuse this patch series.  If
> anything, at least for Debian I will use it as an opportunity to educate
> people about the existence of microcode update packages in "non-free".
> 
I agree. If people are running with downlevel microcode, they shold know about
it.  You can't expect request_firmware to fail silently.  If people complain, I
think the right solution would be to add a test to the microcode_request_fw
function to check for the existence of the file before requesting it.

Neil

> -- 
>   "One disk to rule them all, One disk to find them. One disk to bring
>   them all and in the darkness grind them. In the Land of Redmond
>   where the shadows lie." -- The Silicon Valley Tarot
>   Henrique Holschuh
> 
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