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

Linus Torvalds
2008-07-15T19:50:33Z

On Tue, 15 Jul 2008, David Woodhouse wrote:
>
> I'm unconvinced that the kernel should be setting this kind of policy.

I do think it should probably be conditional, but I think that's true of
udevd itself too, so hey, it cuts both ways.

> But I suppose if you make it tunable in sysfs and just switch to calling
> do_filp_open() directly from firmware_class.c instead of punting to
> userspace, that might work.

Yup. And then you can disable it either statically (config option) or by
writing an invalid path into /proc/sys/kernel/firmware-dir or whatever.

Or you can just decide that if you find something in the kernel-specific
firmware directory, then it should always take precedence over whatever
udev rules. Which sounds good to me anyway.

Maybe you really do have some very kernel-specific issue (ie you're trying
a new driver that can handle a new experimental firmware, but you don't
want your old fall-back kernels to use it because you just fixed the bug
that makes it work again).

Requiring you to write udevd scripts for that sounds insane. I wouldn't
even know where to start.

So kernel-specific directories do make sense. As does the whole "I don't
want to handle the pain that is udev scripts".

Linus