From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Return-Path: Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org via listexpand id S1750906AbWDRNQy (ORCPT ); Tue, 18 Apr 2006 09:16:54 -0400 Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org id S1750891AbWDRNQy (ORCPT ); Tue, 18 Apr 2006 09:16:54 -0400 Received: from pproxy.gmail.com ([64.233.166.181]:64962 "EHLO pproxy.gmail.com") by vger.kernel.org with ESMTP id S1750742AbWDRNQx convert rfc822-to-8bit (ORCPT ); Tue, 18 Apr 2006 09:16:53 -0400 DomainKey-Signature: a=rsa-sha1; q=dns; c=nofws; s=beta; d=gmail.com; h=received:message-id:date:from:sender:to:subject:in-reply-to:mime-version:content-type:content-transfer-encoding:content-disposition:references; b=d5/O2QV51aGLyxsVsYJ56YjxTy2TLGqVUBr/cmc38R1+jNdocXtSKMr2P5+uU4tImOxaYJwAHItTGIW25y9JjNELeC6IsG82E92cIs5sH524OGQyEgHq41m7SX59zQOXnkftFB2gvkAxBz/yeN7AlpOASdJELOBhBa5Gm8JBK0A= Message-ID: <35fb2e590604180616r33a05380p65c0e1c26ae276de@mail.gmail.com> Date: Tue, 18 Apr 2006 14:16:53 +0100 From: "Jon Masters" To: "Linux Kernel" Subject: Re: [RFC] binary firmware and modules In-Reply-To: <1145088656.23134.54.camel@localhost.localdomain> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7BIT Content-Disposition: inline References: <1145088656.23134.54.camel@localhost.localdomain> Sender: linux-kernel-owner@vger.kernel.org X-Mailing-List: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org On 4/15/06, Jon Masters wrote: > The attached patch introduces MODULE_FIRMWARE as one way of 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've also > given an example via the QLogic gla2xxx driver. Ok. If nobody shouts today I'm going to suggest this go into 2.6.17. I think more ellaborate schemes will come up later, but we also need something usable out there now. As others have pointed out, cunning schemes to hack how request_firmware et al work are all very well and good, but often we just don't know what firmware we'll need until runtime. Unless or until there's a good way to address that, I think modules will need to advertise every firmware and distros will have to package all possible firmwares, just in case. Jon.