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

Linus Torvalds
2008-07-15T00:35:00Z

On Mon, 14 Jul 2008, david@lang.hm wrote:
>
> there was also the issue that was raised about how to handle firmware during
> suspend/resume. I don't remember seeing a happy solution to that one.

I don't understand why this even keeps coming up.

The only reliable way to handle it is to load the firmware before the
suspend happens - preferably by simply never unloading it in the first
place.

Anything else is fraught with problems.

Stuff that expects to eject itself anyway(*) over a suspend event can
obviously decide to throw it away and require a reload at resume time (by
virtue of simply re-discovering the whole device!).

Everybody else should just keep the firmware in memory in the driver.

Does it waste some ram? Sure. Tough.

Linus

(*) eg some random USB device that really _really_ doesn't care and isn't
expected to be involved in any filesystem access - say a webcam.