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

David Woodhouse
2008-07-05T12:42:59Z

On Sat, 2008-07-05 at 14:23 +0200, Andi Kleen wrote:
> That's a lot of "should" and "in most cases" and "in a ideal world".

OK, let's phrase it differently:

It almost never happens, and it's trivial to handle it safely in the
extremely rare cases that it does. We don't need to start putting
firmware in /lib/firmware/`uname -r`/ to deal with it.

> What happens when the new firmware is buggy for example and prevents
> booting of the system?

If the firmware is required for booting the system, then it'll be
included in the initramfs. The one on the _real_ file system is
therefore irrelevant. When you select the last-known-good kernel from
your boot loader you'll actually get the old firmware anyway.

And given that we almost never update most of this firmware _either_, it
really isn't a problem we should be losing sleep over.

But distributors are free to shift it into /lib/firmware/`uname -r`/ if
they want to -- it's easy enough to override INSTALL_FW_PATH. For now,
though, that isn't compatible with upstream hotplug scripts and would be
a bad choice as a default.

And if a distribution which actually likes contributing its changes
upstream ever starts using /lib/firmware/`uname -r`/, then perhaps we
can discuss making it the default for the kernel too.

--
dwmw2