Messages in this thread | | | From | Michael Buesch <> | Subject | Re: [PATCH 2/3] firmware: Add CONFIG_BUILTIN_FIRMWARE option | Date | Sun, 25 May 2008 20:39:17 +0200 |
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On Sunday 25 May 2008 20:23:46 Marcel Holtmann wrote: > > The fact that userspace uses the key as a filename is maybe > > unfortunate, > > maybe fortunate, but shouldn't have anything to do with what sort of > > keys the kernel allows. > > I disagree with you. The kernel should be free of these kind of > subdirectory stuff. We saw devfs failing and we have a flat device > node names in the kernel. Why do we have to duplicate information in > the firmware filenames where we have all the information already > present in the driver model. The reason that people are lazy doesn't > work for me.
I think you don't really understand what we are trying to explain. So I'll try it once again.
We are _not_ saying that having hierarchy policy decisions in the kernel is a good thing. It's just the case that we _currently_ have this kind of firmware filename, that happens to _map_ to a hierarchy policy currently made by udev.
That's either unfortunate (to you) or fortunate (to me). In either case we have to live with it and we can _not_ break it. By introducing a policy that forbids the use of the slash, we do break this.
> > Also, you said above (quoting again): > > > >> You are fully > >> exploiting the request_firmware() interface and making any kind of > >> userspace policy impossible. > > > > That's not true at all. If you decide that the userspace policy should > > be to load $modulename/$firmwarekey then you'd maybe have something > > like /lib/firmware/b43/b43-test/ucode5.fw > > and /lib/firmware/b43/b43-osfw/ucode5.fw > > and /lib/firmware/b43/b43/ucode5.fw, this doesn't preclude the use. > > > > Now, if it had been like that from the beginning, Michael probably > > wouldn't have used the string "b43" (or "b43-*") but rather requested > > "broadcom/ucode5.fw" by default and "osfw/ucode5.fw" for the open > > source > > firmware, but since it's just a key that doesn't matter. > > That something works at the moment is not a reason for me not to fix > it and improve the current framework around firmware loading. I have > been a lot of times saying that the request_firmware() should not > include "/" in the filename and driver authors followed it. Some of > them did it anyway and so these need fixing now.
But to forbid usage of "/" is the _wrong_ way to go, as it breaks existing setups.
b43 users are not going to accept re-installing or moving the firmware files to another place. We had that in the past. It will result in a _lot_ of angry complaints like "How dare can you break my setup!".
-- Greetings Michael.
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