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

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Date:	Sat, 05 Jul 2008 13:42:59 +0100
From:	David Woodhouse <dwmw2@...radead.org>
To:	Andi Kleen <andi@...stfloor.org>
Cc:	Olivier Galibert <galibert@...ox.com>,
	Takashi Iwai <tiwai@...e.de>, Hannes Reinecke <hare@...e.de>,
	Theodore Tso <tytso@....edu>, Jeff Garzik <jeff@...zik.org>,
	David Miller <davem@...emloft.net>, hugh@...itas.com,
	akpm@...ux-foundation.org, 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 Sat, 2008-07-05 at 14:23 +0200, Andi Kleen wrote:
> That's a lot of "should" and "in most cases" and "in a ideal world".

OK, let's phrase it differently:

It almost never happens, and it's trivial to handle it safely in the
extremely rare cases that it does. We don't need to start putting
firmware in /lib/firmware/`uname -r`/ to deal with it.

>  What happens when the new firmware is buggy for example and prevents
> booting of the system?

If the firmware is required for booting the system, then it'll be
included in the initramfs. The one on the _real_ file system is
therefore irrelevant. When you select the last-known-good kernel from
your boot loader you'll actually get the old firmware anyway.

And given that we almost never update most of this firmware _either_, it
really isn't a problem we should be losing sleep over.

But distributors are free to shift it into /lib/firmware/`uname -r`/ if
they want to -- it's easy enough to override INSTALL_FW_PATH. For now,
though, that isn't compatible with upstream hotplug scripts and would be
a bad choice as a default.

And if a distribution which actually likes contributing its changes
upstream ever starts using /lib/firmware/`uname -r`/, then perhaps we
can discuss making it the default for the kernel too.

-- 
dwmw2

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