Re: [PATCH 6/7] firmware_class: add "fd" input file

[Greg Kroah-Hartman <gregkh@linuxfoundation.org>]

On Mon, Jul 21, 2014 at 08:43:07AM -0700, Kees Cook wrote:
> On Mon, Jul 21, 2014 at 08:26:35AM -0700, Greg Kroah-Hartman wrote:
> > On Mon, Jul 21, 2014 at 08:08:16AM -0700, Kees Cook wrote:
> > > Perhaps it would be easier if I also sent the patch to udev's helper,
> > > so you could see how I propose handling the userspace change to using
> > > the new interface?
> > 
> > As there is no more "udev firmware helper", I don't know what you would
> > be patching here.  Firmware should always be loaded by the kernel
> > directly, udev isn't involved anyore at all.
> > 
> > confused,
> > 
> > greg k-h
> 
> The kernel _can_ load directly (when the paths are configured correctly),
> but I'm not sure why you say udev isn't involved any more. It's been like
> this for years, and even the latest systemd shows the udev rule is still in
> place:
> http://cgit.freedesktop.org/systemd/systemd/tree/rules/50-firmware.rules
> and that the firmware loader is still in the source tree:
> http://cgit.freedesktop.org/systemd/systemd/tree/src/udev/udev-builtin-firmware.c

Ah, I thought that I had seen patches to delete this code on the systemd
mailing list in the past, I didn't realize they hadn't been accepted
yet.

But, with my current tree, in linux-next, it's really hard to select the
"external firmware loader" on purpose, as we want people to use the
in-kernel one if at all possible, and only fall back to the "legacy"
udev userspace loader if they are running on old userspace systems.

> Here's the patch for the new interface...

I'd really not like to add a new interface for this model when we are
trying to delete it entirely.  Why not just rely on the in-kernel loader
instead for this new feature?

thanks,

greg k-h