Messages in this thread |  | | | Date | Tue, 21 Jun 2005 08:42:08 +0100 | | From | Simon Kelley <> | | Subject | Re: ipw2100: firmware problem |
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Jirka Bohac wrote: > On Wed, Jun 08, 2005 at 05:44:20PM +0300, Denis Vlasenko wrote: > >>On Wednesday 08 June 2005 17:23, Pavel Machek wrote: >> >>>What's the prefered way to solve this one? Only load firmware when >>>user does ifconfig eth1 up? [It is wifi, it looks like it would be >>>better to start firmware sooner so that it can associate to the >>>AP...]. >> >>Do you want to associate to an AP when your kernel boots, >>_before_ any iwconfig had a chance to configure anything? >>That's strange. >> >>My position is that wifi drivers must start up in an "OFF" mode. >>Do not send anything. Do not join APs or start IBSS. > > > Agreed. > > >>Thus, no need to load fw in early boot. > > > I don't think this is true. Loading the firmware on the first > "ifconfig up" is problematic. Often, people want to rename the > device from ethX/wlanX/... to something stable. This is usually > based on the adapter's MAC address, which is not visible until > the firmware is loaded. > > Prism54 does it this way and it really sucks. You need to bring > the adapter up to load the firmware, then bring it back down, > rename it, and bring it up again. >
The atmel driver includes a small firmware stub which does nothing but determine the MAC address, to solve this problem. This is compiled into the driver and so doesn't depend on request_firmware(). The stub was created by reverse engineering the card and is GPL, so there's no problem including it in the kernel.
This is not a general solution, since it depends on the ability to create such MAC reader firmware, but it might be a possibility in this case.
Cheers,
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