Re: absolute firmware paths

[Marcel Holtmann <marcel@holtmann.org>]

Hi Sebastian,

> I'm looking into using request_firmware()/udev to get firmware
> into a couple of device drivers i'm writing, but I want to be able
> to provide absolute paths for the firmware file and have firmware.sh
> honor it.
> 
> The drivers are for a family of FPGA-based cards, mostly PCI.  We're
> using the cards for motion control of machine tools and other robots,
> see <http://www.linuxcnc.org>.
> 
> Anyway, the drivers and the firmware are distributed together.  A common
> use case for many of our developers and some of our users is to check
> out the source code, maybe hack on it some, build it, and run it out of
> the sandbox (without installing).  The problem is that udev can't find
> the firmwares in peoples home directories.
> 
> My proposal is to have the driver accept a modparam giving the absolute
> path to the firmware file the user wants, and have the firmware.sh
> helper read it from there, bypassing the normal firmware search path.
> 
> In the other use case, when the software is installed properly, the
> modparam can be skipped and the driver will request default firmware
> using relative paths (and udev will find the firmware in /lib/firmware).

use symlinks like everybody else.

Regards

Marcel