Re: dell_rbu: Select CONFIG_FW_LOADER_USER_HELPER explicitly

Greg KH
2013-07-08T16:49:35Z

On Mon, Jul 08, 2013 at 11:05:20AM +0200, Takashi Iwai wrote:
> The reason is that dell_rbu driver requires it. Without the kconfig
> option, this driver won't work at all. So, it's a right fix for
> dell_rbu.
>
> AFAIK, the consensus in the kernel side is that this too long fw
> loading time is basically a regression of user-space (udev or
> whatever). There is no change in the kernel behavior. The problem
> must exist even with the older kernels.
>
> But, looking at the development, we can't expect that udev will be
> fixed soon, and this breakage persists already way too long. Maybe a
> better solution is to kill the fallback to udev for normal f/w loading
> (i.e. for distro kernels).

I thought udev was already fixed for this issue, so why would a "modern"
distro need to worry about this?

> The patch below is an untested quick hack. It adds a new Kconfig and
> a new function request_firmware_via_user_helper(). Distro kernels may
> set CONFIG_FW_LOADER_USER_HELPER_FALLBACK=n for avoiding 60 seconds
> stall for non-existing firmware file access -- as distributions know
> that the firmware files should be placed in the right path.
>
> Thoughts?

There's no way we can just fix up the driver instead of doing this in
the firmware core?

thanks,

greg k-h