Re: [GIT *] Allow request_firmware() to be satisfied from in-kernel, use it in more drivers.

Frans Pop
2008-07-16T00:23:10Z

On Wednesday 16 July 2008, Linus Torvalds wrote:
> On Tue, 15 Jul 2008, david@lang.hm wrote:
> > becouse the tools that wrote the initrd already put the modules in. I
> > don't maintain those tools, they came with the distro. we're just
> > asking to not require those tools to be updated immediatly.
>
> But mkinitrd (which is the _only_ thing that people tend to use to
> write initrd's - is there even anything else) has already been doing
> this for years, as has been pointed out several times.

Debian doe not have mkinitrd but initramfs-tools [1] and yaird [2]. The
status of the last is uncertain (not currently included for Lenny).

Where did you get this strange notion that mkinitrd is the _only_ (your
emphasis) thing people use?
Point is that I find it really strange that - in the extremely rich and
varied world that is based on Linux - you seem so certain that every tool
out there already does the right thing for all cases, or can be trivially
updated to do so. I just don't believe that.

I even _know_ that yaird is broken wrt. firmware [3]. It's one of the
reasons it's unlikely to be included in Lenny.

But hell, I'll see if I can give this a try tomorrow. Get out of this
crazy make-belief discussion and provide some facts. Who knows, maybe
I'll be surprised and the existing Debian toolsets will do the right
thing. I seriously doubt it though.

[1] http://packages.debian.org/sid/initramfs-tools
[2] http://packages.debian.org/sid/yaird
[3] Only works if config files are edited manually which makes it useless
during e.g. new installs.