linux-kernel - Re: [PATCH 1/4] firmware: generalize "firmware" as "system data" helpers

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Date:	Thu, 17 Dec 2015 11:16:09 -0800
From:	"Luis R. Rodriguez" <mcgrof@...not-panic.com>
To:	Josh Boyer <jwboyer@...oraproject.org>,
	Linus Torvalds <torvalds@...ux-foundation.org>,
	Daniel Vetter <daniel.vetter@...el.com>
Cc:	Greg KH <gregkh@...uxfoundation.org>,
	Ming Lei <ming.lei@...onical.com>,
	Jonathan Corbet <corbet@....net>,
	"Linux-Kernel@...r. Kernel. Org" <linux-kernel@...r.kernel.org>,
	"linux-doc@...r.kernel.org" <linux-doc@...r.kernel.org>,
	David Woodhouse <dwmw2@...radead.org>,
	David Howells <dhowells@...hat.com>,
	Seth Forshee <seth.forshee@...onical.com>,
	Rusty Russell <rusty@...tcorp.com.au>,
	Michal Marek <mmarek@...e.cz>,
	Matthew Garrett <mjg59@...f.ucam.org>,
	Kyle McMartin <kyle@...nel.org>,
	linux-security-module <linux-security-module@...r.kernel.org>,
	keyrings@...ux-nfs.org, Andrew Morton <akpm@...ux-foundation.org>,
	Kees Cook <keescook@...omium.org>,
	Casey Schaufler <casey@...aufler-ca.com>,
	Takashi Iwai <tiwai@...e.de>,
	Vojtěch Pavlík <vojtech@...e.cz>
Subject: Re: [PATCH 1/4] firmware: generalize "firmware" as "system data" helpers

On Thu, Oct 8, 2015 at 1:16 PM, Josh Boyer <jwboyer@...oraproject.org> wrote:
> On Tue, Oct 6, 2015 at 5:08 AM, Greg KH <gregkh@...uxfoundation.org> wrote:
>> Just responding to one thing at the moment:
>>
>> On Mon, Oct 05, 2015 at 11:22:22PM +0200, Luis R. Rodriguez wrote:
>>>   * we should phase out the usermode helper from firmware_class long term
>>
>> You can "phase out", but you can not delete it as it's a user/kernel api
>> that we have to support for forever, sorry.
>
> Assuming that dell-rbu is the only in-tree legitimate user of the
> userhelper code, I'm curious if the code itself could simply move into
> that driver.  It might help prevent the spread of reliance on an API
> we don't want to see grow in usage.  We'd probably need to evaluate if
> the two new users could migrate off that.

Greg pointed out Daniel might have some uses for this. More on this later.

>> Also, for some devices / use cases, the usermode helper is the solution
>> (think async loading of firmware when the host wants to do it.)
>
> Are any of those use cases in the kernel today, aside from dell-rbu?
> Would Luis' async mode to system data suffice?

We'll have to see based on Daniel's feedback (Daniel, please respond
to the other thread I'll Cc you on).

 Luis
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