From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Return-Path: Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org via listexpand id S1760008AbYE2VcT (ORCPT ); Thu, 29 May 2008 17:32:19 -0400 Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org id S1753185AbYE2VcD (ORCPT ); Thu, 29 May 2008 17:32:03 -0400 Received: from 74-93-104-97-Washington.hfc.comcastbusiness.net ([74.93.104.97]:50785 "EHLO sunset.davemloft.net" rhost-flags-OK-FAIL-OK-OK) by vger.kernel.org with ESMTP id S1755870AbYE2VcB (ORCPT ); Thu, 29 May 2008 17:32:01 -0400 Date: Thu, 29 May 2008 14:31:57 -0700 (PDT) Message-Id: <20080529.143157.02330907.davem@davemloft.net> To: yhlu.kernel@gmail.com Cc: matthew@wil.cx, arjan@linux.intel.com, greg@kroah.com, James.Bottomley@hansenpartnership.com, ksummit-2008-discuss@lists.linux-foundation.org, dwmw2@infradead.org, linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org Subject: Re: [Ksummit-2008-discuss] RFC: Moving firmware blobs out of the kernel. From: David Miller In-Reply-To: <86802c440805291355p5697c775k5f0beb8163688058@mail.gmail.com> References: <483F1232.4010003@linux.intel.com> <20080529204736.GZ22636@parisc-linux.org> <86802c440805291355p5697c775k5f0beb8163688058@mail.gmail.com> X-Mailer: Mew version 5.2 on Emacs 22.1 / Mule 5.0 (SAKAKI) Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: Text/Plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Sender: linux-kernel-owner@vger.kernel.org List-ID: X-Mailing-List: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org From: "Yinghai Lu" Date: Thu, 29 May 2008 13:55:16 -0700 > driver should check fw version... This alone is not a reason to rip the firmware out into a seperate tree. And I am absolutely not convinced that the cases where this matters all universally even use firmware versions. I've installed the wrong ipw2200 on several occaisions. Furthermore, it's about distributing what works with what it's meant to work with. With this seperate scheme, I can still link in the wrong firmware file (the driver doesn't check the firmware version until it executes) and the driver won't work. So this moves the validation to run time, which users typically don't appreciate.