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

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Message-ID: <20130913150038.GB31185@hmsreliant.think-freely.org>
Date:	Fri, 13 Sep 2013 11:00:38 -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 Fri, Sep 13, 2013 at 10:56:39AM -0300, Henrique de Moraes Holschuh wrote:
> On Thu, 12 Sep 2013, Neil Horman wrote:
> > 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.
> 
> Make it a firmware loader API for "optional" firmware (i.e. which doesn't
> complain on ENOENT), leaving for the caller the detail of whether a
> firmware-not-there failure should be logged or not.
> 
That makes sense, I'll subit that in a separate patch this afternoon
Thanks!
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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