From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Return-Path: Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org via listexpand id S1750805AbWDSJIo (ORCPT ); Wed, 19 Apr 2006 05:08:44 -0400 Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org id S1750806AbWDSJIo (ORCPT ); Wed, 19 Apr 2006 05:08:44 -0400 Received: from smtp5-g19.free.fr ([212.27.42.35]:54497 "EHLO smtp5-g19.free.fr") by vger.kernel.org with ESMTP id S1750805AbWDSJIo (ORCPT ); Wed, 19 Apr 2006 05:08:44 -0400 From: Duncan Sands To: Jon Masters Subject: Re: [PATCH] MODULE_FIRMWARE for binary firmware(s) Date: Wed, 19 Apr 2006 11:07:10 +0200 User-Agent: KMail/1.9.1 Cc: akpm@osdl.org, linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org References: <20060418234156.GA28346@apogee.jonmasters.org> In-Reply-To: <20060418234156.GA28346@apogee.jonmasters.org> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Content-Disposition: inline Message-Id: <200604191107.10562.duncan.sands@math.u-psud.fr> Sender: linux-kernel-owner@vger.kernel.org X-Mailing-List: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org Hi Jon, > However, there is right now little mechanism in place to automatically > determine which binary firmware blobs must be included with a kernel in > order to satisfy the prerequisites of these drivers. This affects > vendors, but also regular users to a certain extent too. > > The attached patch introduces MODULE_FIRMWARE as a mechanism for > advertising that a particular firmware file is to be loaded - it will > then show up via modinfo and could be used e.g. when packaging a kernel. I haven't really understood what problem this solves. Is this just a standardised form of documentation, or are you imagining that an automatic tool will use this to auto include a minimal set of firmware files in an initrd? I'm thinking of something like this: (1) redhat (or whoever) ships firmware files for every driver under the sun in /lib/firmware; (2) redhat wants to allow users to have a customized initrd with only essential drivers; (3) the tool goes through the list of essential drivers, looks up the firmware string via MODULE_FIRMWARE, finds the file in /lib/firmware, and includes it in the initrd. All the best, Duncan.