netdev - Re: [bug?] tg3: Failed to load firmware "tigon/tg3

lists.openwall.net		lists / announce owl-users owl-dev john-users john-dev passwdqc-users yescrypt popa3d-users / oss-security kernel-hardening musl sabotage tlsify passwords / crypt-dev xvendor / Bugtraq Full-Disclosure linux-kernel linux-netdev linux-ext4 linux-hardening linux-cve-announce PHC
Open Source and information security mailing list archives

Hash Suite: Windows password security audit tool. GUI, reports in PDF.

[<prev] [next>] [<thread-prev] [thread-next>] [day] [month] [year] [list]

Date:	Thu, 03 Jul 2008 15:31:07 -0400
From:	Valdis.Kletnieks@...edu
To:	David Woodhouse <dwmw2@...radead.org>
Cc:	Theodore Tso <tytso@....edu>, Jeff Garzik <jeff@...zik.org>,
	Hugh Dickins <hugh@...itas.com>,
	Andrew Morton <akpm@...ux-foundation.org>,
	KOSAKI Motohiro <kosaki.motohiro@...fujitsu.com>,
	mchan@...adcom.com, linux-kernel@...r.kernel.org,
	linux-mm@...ck.org, netdev@...r.kernel.org
Subject: Re: [bug?] tg3: Failed to load firmware "tigon/tg3_tso.bin"

On Thu, 03 Jul 2008 19:56:02 BST, David Woodhouse said:

> They had to 'make oldconfig' and then actually _choose_ to say 'no' to
> an option which is fairly clearly documented, that they are the
> relatively unusual position of wanting to have said 'yes' to. You're
> getting into Aunt Tillie territory, when you complain about that.

Note that some of us chose 'no' because we *thought* that we already *had*
everything in /lib/firmware that we needed (in my case, the iwl3945 wireless
firmware and the Intel cpu microcode).  The first that I realized that
the tg3 *had* firmware was when I saw the failure message, because before
that, the binary blob was inside the kernel.  And then, it wasn't trivially
obvious how to get firmware loaded if the tg3 driver was builtin rather
than a module.

And based on some of the other people who apparently got bit by this same
exact behavior change on this same exact "builtin but no firmware in kernel"
config with this same exact driver, it's obvious that one of two things is true:

1) Several of the highest-up maintainers are Aunt Tillies.
or
2) This is sufficiently subtle and complicated that far more experienced
people than Aunt Tillie will Get It Very Wrong.

Content of type "application/pgp-signature" skipped