On Thu, 13 Dec 2001, Martin Diehl wrote:
> On Thu, 13 Dec 2001 [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
>
> > Firstly, let me clarify that the problem is with _reloading_ firmware
> > due to resumption from power management.
>
> Absolutely. But note, that is not the only problem: If the driver has to
> manage dynamic loading of different overlaid firmware images at runtime
Are there devices that really do that ?
For these devices you need support in the device driver itself.
It must block during firmware download.
If a single download is sufficient generic drivers eg acm can be used.
[..]
> However, I do believe it is still a good idea to provide firmware
images
> from userland instead of having them compiled into the kernel. Not because
> of some not-even-hypothetical GPL issue but simply to ease maintenance.
Absolutely. The firmware should be provided by user space.
Once, upon initial device detection. From then on, everything must be
purely in kernel.
[..]
> On the other side a driver with firmware download requirements simply
> registers to this firmware manager with its class (usb, pci, other...),
> vid/did and list of required firmware id's. In the firmware-fs example
> this would create the usb/vid/did/fw_id nodes so the firmware-provider
> could start image donation from userland. Whenever the driver wants to
> download some image, it issues a (nonblocking) request to the firmware
> manager to retrieve it for downloading. If this fails (requested image to
> found), the driver has all the knowledge to decide, whether it is possible
> to try some usermode helper fallback or simply give up. On unload finally,
> the driver unregisters from the manager and all its firmware images get
> freed.
Is there really a need for the driver to register a download request ?
IMHO it would be better if the firmware device driver simply was fed ids
and firmware images from user space and worked idependently.
Regards
Oliver
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