From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Return-Path: Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org via listexpand id S1757584AbYE3B24 (ORCPT ); Thu, 29 May 2008 21:28:56 -0400 Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org id S1752707AbYE3B2s (ORCPT ); Thu, 29 May 2008 21:28:48 -0400 Received: from gate.crashing.org ([63.228.1.57]:60928 "EHLO gate.crashing.org" rhost-flags-OK-OK-OK-OK) by vger.kernel.org with ESMTP id S1753240AbYE3B2r (ORCPT ); Thu, 29 May 2008 21:28:47 -0400 Subject: Re: [Ksummit-2008-discuss] RFC: Moving firmware blobs out of the kernel. From: Benjamin Herrenschmidt Reply-To: benh@kernel.crashing.org To: Peter Zijlstra Cc: Jeff Garzik , David Woodhouse , ksummit-2008-discuss@lists.linux-foundation.org, linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org, James.Bottomley@hansenpartnership.com, David Miller In-Reply-To: <1212095864.24826.2.camel@lappy.programming.kicks-ass.net> References: <1211995212.3445.52.camel@localhost.localdomain> <20080528.225826.40264516.davem@davemloft.net> <1212041839.8888.38.camel@pasglop> <20080529124548.GC8065@mit.edu> <1212077700.26088.83.camel@shinybook.infradead.org> <483F002E.5060002@garzik.org> <1212095864.24826.2.camel@lappy.programming.kicks-ass.net> Content-Type: text/plain Date: Fri, 30 May 2008 11:27:50 +1000 Message-Id: <1212110870.15633.17.camel@pasglop> Mime-Version: 1.0 X-Mailer: Evolution 2.22.1.1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Sender: linux-kernel-owner@vger.kernel.org List-ID: X-Mailing-List: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org On Thu, 2008-05-29 at 23:17 +0200, Peter Zijlstra wrote: > > If the firmware has a compatible license and is required for critical > > operations like booting the machine, built-in firmware should remain an > > option. For certain embedded cases, I could certainly see that > > in-kernel firmware being the best method for firmware distribution, for > > both $Platform's users and $Platform's developers. > > I certainly agree, pushing more and more into initrd just annoys the > hell out of me. > > I'd argue to include everything needed to build (and esp cross build) an > initrd into the kernel - up until that point initrds are useless. Us kernel hackers tend to like self-contained netbootable kernels that have everything needed to boot a machine all the way to a shell prompt :-) David's proposal however do provides for storing the firmwares in the kernel image, so I have no objection there. Ben.