On Wed, 2010-09-29 at 00:41 +0200, Carl-Daniel Hailfinger wrote: > [adding [email protected] to CC, senders will be whitelisted after a > short delay] > > On 28.09.2010 19:59, Ben Hutchings wrote: > > Network and disk controllers normally have at least some firmware in > > flash to support their use as boot devices. [...] > > > > Currently the sfc network driver is optionally combined with an MTD > > driver (CONFIG_SFC_MTD) which exposes all upgradable firmware and > > configuration partitions in flash. This works nicely in kernels with > > MTD enabled, but since MTD is mainly used in embedded systems with > > on-board flash it is often disabled in distribution kernels and custom > > kernels alike. This leaves users of sfc unable to upgrade firmware > > without rebuilding the kernel or booting some other distribution. The > > lack of widespread MTD support is a regular cause of support requests. > > > > There are two main alternatives I'm aware of: > > > > - Use the ethtool ETHTOOL_SEEPROM [...] > > > > - Use the ethtool ETHTOOL_FLASHDEV command [..] > > > > Of course these are both specific to network devices; it seems deisrable > > to have a more general convention for online firmware upgrades. MTDs > > clearly are more generally applicable, and pretty much every computer > > does have flash storage for firmware and boot configuration, so perhaps > > it should be treated as more of a standard feature? > > > > Given that the flashrom utility <http://www.flashrom.org/> (GPLv2) > supports flashing many network cards, SATA/PATA controllers, graphics > cards, and of course the main system firmware/BIOS/EFI, and it does that > from userspace without any kernel support, [...]
I'm looking for a clean solution, not a hack. Ben. -- Ben Hutchings, Senior Software Engineer, Solarflare Communications Not speaking for my employer; that's the marketing department's job. They asked us to note that Solarflare product names are trademarked. _______________________________________________ flashrom mailing list [email protected] http://www.flashrom.org/mailman/listinfo/flashrom
