DragonFly kernel List (threaded) for 2007-05
DragonFly BSD
DragonFly kernel List (threaded) for 2007-05
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Re: firmware loading


From: "Sepherosa Ziehau" <sepherosa@xxxxxxxxx>
Date: Sat, 12 May 2007 15:02:48 +0800

On 5/12/07, km b <kmb810@gmail.com> wrote:
On 5/12/07, Sepherosa Ziehau <sepherosa@gmail.com> wrote:

> Add a new ioctl command into driver's ioctl handler, then add a user
> space program to parse the raw ucode, and send the parsed results to
> driver through the newly added ioctl command.  Driver can then load
> the results (e.g. text and data segments) into device.  Take a look at
> iwi(4) and iwicontrol(8) for example.

is it really necessary to do it this way? cause i don't like the idea
of using a user space program for directing the driver to load the
firmware. instead the firmware can be loaded and cached during the
device attach routine.

I generally avoid loading firmware at attaching time, except that you can't get the MAC address without firmware being loaded. You can't change firmware without recompile the module or kernel if it is loaded at attaching time. And it may introduce some firmware license problems too. And I perfer _not_ to play with filesystem in driver code, no matter at attaching time or runtime.


the firmware_image_load_file can be the appropriate candidate for such functionality provided that it just returns the raw data from the /etc/xxx firmware file without allocating the dma resources.

We will always need to allocate DMA resources for the firmware loading.


Best Regards,
sephe

--
Live Free or Die



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