netdev - Re: [GIT] Networking

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Message-ID: <AANLkTikwrHoOY4wvUp1qn-OT=EjZesSNR29US1ERc0o2@mail.gmail.com>
Date:	Fri, 7 Jan 2011 11:49:37 -0800
From:	Linus Torvalds <torvalds@...ux-foundation.org>
To:	Ben Hutchings <benh@...ian.org>
Cc:	David Miller <davem@...emloft.net>,
	Hayes Wang <hayeswang@...ltek.com>,
	Francois Romieu <romieu@...zoreil.com>,
	David Woodhouse <dwmw2@...radead.org>,
	akpm@...ux-foundation.org, netdev@...r.kernel.org,
	linux-kernel@...r.kernel.org
Subject: Re: [GIT] Networking

On Fri, Jan 7, 2011 at 11:06 AM, Ben Hutchings <benh@...ian.org> wrote:
>
> This is because the driver is requesting firmware during probe, before
> there is a firmware agent available (maybe even before / is mounted?)
> rather than when the interface is brought up, as many other network
> drivers do.

Yeah, doing it at device up time would fix the problem.

> At the very least, we ought to make firmware loading fail fast and
> noisily if this happens.

Absolutely.
>

> There were some tables of PHY registers to poke that were a mixture of
> control register writes and transfer of firmware to the microcontroller.
> Hayes and Francois have separated those out.

Ok.

>> I bet I can make it work by making it a module, and installing the
>> firmware manually. But it's supposed to work even without that.
>
> Right.  This is very vaguely based on a patch I applied in Debian
> where we build r8169 as a module, and I don't think anyone reported
> this behaviour.

I just confirmed that building it as a module works

[ Apart from the annoyance of also having to manually copying the
firmware files: why the heck doesn't that firmware tree even have a
"make firmware-install" makefile or something? The kernel has a "make
firmware-install" thing, why doesn't the firmware tree itself have
that? Gaah, this is almost as idiotic as trying to install a
self-built kernel under Ubuntu ]

                        Linus
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