Re: [PATCH v4 5/5] net: phy: aquantia: use generic firmware loader

[Marek Vasut <marek.vasut@mailbox.org>]

On 10/31/25 5:34 PM, Beiyan Yun wrote:
> 
> 
>> On 31 Oct 2025, at 11:57 PM, Marek Vasut <marek.vasut@mailbox.org> wrote:
>>
>> On 10/31/25 4:21 PM, Beiyan Yun wrote:
>>> Aquantia PHYs are being used w/o SPI flash in some routers recently.
>>> Current firmware loader only attempts to load from FS on top of MMC,
>>> limiting the use on many devices.
>>> Removed the old firmware loader, migrate to generic firmware loader to
>>> allow a wider range and runtime override of firmware source. (e.g., USB).
>>> Tested on Buffalo WXR18000BE10P with UBIFS.
>>> Signed-off-by: Beiyan Yun <root@infi.wang>
>>> ---
>>> Changes in v4:
>>> - Split firmware upload helpers change
>>> - Reorder `aquantia_read_fw`
>>> - Make `aquantia_read_fw` weak to allow overide
>>> - Rename exit label in `aquantia_read_fw`
>>> - Kconfig polish
>>> Changes in v3:
>>> - Select FW_LOADER with PHY_AQUANTIA_UPLOAD_FW
>>> Changes in v2:
>>> - Add support for script based loader
>>>   drivers/net/phy/Kconfig    |  28 +++++----
>>>   drivers/net/phy/aquantia.c | 122 ++++++++++++++++++++++---------------
>>>   2 files changed, 91 insertions(+), 59 deletions(-)
>>> diff --git a/drivers/net/phy/Kconfig b/drivers/net/phy/Kconfig
>>> index 018be98705a..4a74a0d4e8c 100644
>>> --- a/drivers/net/phy/Kconfig
>>> +++ b/drivers/net/phy/Kconfig
>>> @@ -1,4 +1,3 @@
>>> -
>>>   config BITBANGMII
>>>   	bool "Bit-banged ethernet MII management channel support"
>>>   @@ -91,23 +90,30 @@ menuconfig PHY_AQUANTIA
>>>   config PHY_AQUANTIA_UPLOAD_FW
>>>   	bool "Aquantia firmware loading support"
>>>   	depends on PHY_AQUANTIA
>>> +	select FS_LOADER
>>> +	select FW_LOADER
>> Can you not use the plain FW_LOADER to load the firmware from either storage, UBI or Block ? Is FS_LOADER even needed ?
> 
> Thanks for the suggestion, and yes you can, but that API is script-only—it expects the board to stage the blob and just copies from the address exposed via *_addr/_size. The current users of this driver expect the old pattern: the bootloader mounts a filesystem (MMC before, now possibly UBI/USB/etc.), reads the firmware, and applies it. Keeping an fs-loader node in the DT is effectively the same contract as the legacy MMC setup, just generalized.

Can you maybe write a script which implements the old loader behavior in 
a compatible manner ?

> The fs_loader driver gives us several things the script path doesn’t: a standard way to describe the storage via "/chosen/firmware-loader"

Try this:

"fdt addr $fdtcontroladdr ; fdt print /chosen"

And then look at the "fdt" command and what it can do regarding reading 
content of DT properties into variables.

> , runtime overrides through "storage_interface/fw_dev_part/fw_ubi_*, and no requirement for a board-specific script. So FS_LOADER isn’t redundant—it’s the part that replaces the hard-coded MMC flow with a configurable backend, while the script helper stays available for boards that want extra logic.
Maybe a more generic script can be a replacement for the older 
hard-coded approach ?