Re: [bug?] tg3: Failed to load firmware "tigon/tg3_tso.bin"

Christoph Hellwig
2008-07-05T17:13:16Z

On Sat, Jul 05, 2008 at 01:16:06PM +0100, David Woodhouse wrote:
> It almost never happens that you have kernel versions which _need_
> different firmware installed. In almost all cases, the older driver will
> continue to work just fine with the newer firmware (and its bug-fixes).
>
> The ABI between driver and firmware rarely changes in such a fashion
> that you have to update the driver in lock-step -- and even on the
> occasions that it does, it's not hard to simply change the name of the
> "new-style" firmware so that it doesn't stomp on the old one (Think of
> it like an soname).

That's unfortunately not true. There are a lot of drivers that rely
on specific firmware versions.