Messages in this thread | | | Subject | Re: [Ksummit-2008-discuss] RFC: Moving firmware blobs out of the kernel. | From | James Bottomley <> | Date | Thu, 29 May 2008 15:59:42 -0500 |
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On Thu, 2008-05-29 at 13:55 -0700, Yinghai Lu wrote: > On Thu, May 29, 2008 at 1:47 PM, Matthew Wilcox <matthew@wil.cx> wrote: > > On Thu, May 29, 2008 at 01:29:38PM -0700, Arjan van de Ven wrote: > >> I very much would like to see a kernel-firmware or something tarbal that contains > >> a copy of all relevant "freely distributable" firmware, that users can just install > >> independent of the actual kernel version (and that kbuild would just pick up somehow). > >> That way we can deal with a lot more firmware without having to pollute the kernel / kernel release process > >> (after all, the timing is different in terms of releasing) while making it easy > >> to get the lot of it. > > > > There's definitely two schools of thought on this. Sometimes firmware > > changes (or adds) an interface. If the kernel driver has to accommodate > > new and old firmware, that adds complexity, and we all know that added > > complexity means more bugs. So I can definitely see some vendors > > wanting to distribute their firmware with the kernel. > > > driver should check fw version...
Drivers with built in firmware usually don't. Most don't actually have even a version string they could check. Why would they: the firmware with the driver is the right one. When I converted the aic94xx driver to go from built in firmware to externally loaded, the first thing I had to do was to give it a firmware version string in the binary. It's this type of problem that makes the conversion such a pain.
James
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