Messages in this thread | | | Date | Sat, 5 Jul 2008 16:44:45 +0200 | From | Olivier Galibert <> | Subject | Re: [bug?] tg3: Failed to load firmware "tigon/tg3_tso.bin" |
| |
On Sat, Jul 05, 2008 at 01:16:06PM +0100, David Woodhouse wrote: > It almost never happens that you have kernel versions which _need_ > different firmware installed. In almost all cases, the older driver will > continue to work just fine with the newer firmware (and its bug-fixes).
I'm not sure which planet you're from, but it's one without ipw2200 chips in it. And in any case, the file names change.
> The ABI between driver and firmware rarely changes in such a fashion > that you have to update the driver in lock-step -- and even on the > occasions that it does, it's not hard to simply change the name of the > "new-style" firmware so that it doesn't stomp on the old one (Think of > it like an soname).
Ah, I see, you just didn't read the thread you're replying to. Let's do it again one more time.
The question is, how do you sanely distribute the kernel-tree generated firmware in a binary distribution, knowing that you want to be able to have multiple working kernels installed simultaneously?
Solution 1: in the kernel package -> You get file conflicts on the firmware files that do not change between kernel versions
Solution 2: in a package by itself -> You either break compatibility with kernel versions that happened before a firmware change, or you accumulate tons of files over time. The accumulated form gets hard to create from source.
Solution 3: in the kernel package or in a kernel-specific package, but the files are in a kernel version-specific directory (/lib/firmware/`uname -r`, /lib/modules/`uname -r`/firmware) -> Incompatible with current userspace
Solution 4: in one package per firmware file, with appropriate dependencies on the kernel package -> A number of kernel package maintainers just took a hit on you
Any other solution you can see?
OG.
| |