In tree firmware not kept up to date

In tree firmware not kept up to date

[Ian Campbell]

Hello,

What is the current policy wrt keeping the in-tree firmware updated
alongside the drivers?

I use CONFIG_FIRMWARE_IN_KERNEL but a couple of times[0] recently this
has failed me because the in-tree bnx2 driver requires
bnx2/bnx2-mips-09-6.2.1b.fw but the tree contains
firmware/bnx2/bnx2-mips-09-6.2.1a.fw.ihex and not 6.2.1b.

Is it a bug that bnx2 was updated without adding the new firmware or is
a bug that the obsolete firmware is still sitting in the tree?

Ian.

[0] It's possible the same thing and I've just tripped over it more than
once now.

Re: In tree firmware not kept up to date

[Michael Chan]

On Tue, 2012-04-17 at 16:11 +0100, Ian Campbell wrote: 
> Hello,
> 
> What is the current policy wrt keeping the in-tree firmware updated
> alongside the drivers?
> 
> I use CONFIG_FIRMWARE_IN_KERNEL but a couple of times[0] recently this
> has failed me because the in-tree bnx2 driver requires
> bnx2/bnx2-mips-09-6.2.1b.fw but the tree contains
> firmware/bnx2/bnx2-mips-09-6.2.1a.fw.ihex and not 6.2.1b.
> 
> Is it a bug that bnx2 was updated without adding the new firmware or is
> a bug that the obsolete firmware is still sitting in the tree?

We probably should remove the obsolete firmware in the kernel tree.  All
the firmware files to support old and new kernels are here:

git://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/firmware/linux-firmware.git

Re: In tree firmware not kept up to date

[Ben Hutchings]

On Tue, Apr 17, 2012 at 04:11:44PM +0100, Ian Campbell wrote:
> Hello,
> 
> What is the current policy wrt keeping the in-tree firmware updated
> alongside the drivers?

Muddled.

> I use CONFIG_FIRMWARE_IN_KERNEL but a couple of times[0] recently this
> has failed me because the in-tree bnx2 driver requires
> bnx2/bnx2-mips-09-6.2.1b.fw but the tree contains
> firmware/bnx2/bnx2-mips-09-6.2.1a.fw.ihex and not 6.2.1b.
> 
> Is it a bug that bnx2 was updated without adding the new firmware or is
> a bug that the obsolete firmware is still sitting in the tree?

It's a bug that any firmware is still in-tree, but
CONFIG_FIRMWARE_IN_KERNEL hasn't yet been made to work with a separate
linux-firmware directory.

Ben.

> Ian.
> 
> [0] It's possible the same thing and I've just tripped over it more than
> once now.

-- 
Ben Hutchings
We get into the habit of living before acquiring the habit of thinking.
                                                              - Albert Camus

Re: In tree firmware not kept up to date

[Ian Campbell]

On Tue, 2012-04-17 at 20:03 +0100, Ben Hutchings wrote:
> On Tue, Apr 17, 2012 at 04:11:44PM +0100, Ian Campbell wrote:
> > Hello,
> > 
> > What is the current policy wrt keeping the in-tree firmware updated
> > alongside the drivers?
> 
> Muddled.
> 
> > I use CONFIG_FIRMWARE_IN_KERNEL but a couple of times[0] recently this
> > has failed me because the in-tree bnx2 driver requires
> > bnx2/bnx2-mips-09-6.2.1b.fw but the tree contains
> > firmware/bnx2/bnx2-mips-09-6.2.1a.fw.ihex and not 6.2.1b.
> > 
> > Is it a bug that bnx2 was updated without adding the new firmware or is
> > a bug that the obsolete firmware is still sitting in the tree?
> 
> It's a bug that any firmware is still in-tree, but
> CONFIG_FIRMWARE_IN_KERNEL hasn't yet been made to work with a separate
> linux-firmware directory.

Thanks, so the future-proof solution is to clone and install
firmware-linux.gitwhich is currently a rather manual process but will
improve at some point.

Cheers,
Ian.

> 
> Ben.
> 
> > Ian.
> > 
> > [0] It's possible the same thing and I've just tripped over it more than
> > once now.
>