Re: [PATCH] MODULE_FIRMWARE for binary firmware(s)

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Jon,
would it be possible to have something less then an initrd that would allow the firmware blob to be packaged with the kernel? Your approach is just fine if the things that will need firmware are compiled as modules (the firmware can be placed on the same filesystem image as the modules that need it) but some people prefer to build monolithic kernel images, and in those cases there is no way for the kernel to get the firmware as there is no filesystem available yet.

I know that Rob Landley is doing some tricks with firmware linux to append an initramfs to the kernel image (http://www.landley.net/code/firmware/). There is already support in the kconfig for specifying the initramfs source, why culdn't we have the build process fetch any firmware needed by the non-modular portions and store them at the end of the kernel image so that they can be found during boot.

if nothing else make a skeleton initramfs that contains the modules and just enough other logic to continue the boot process as if the initramfs wasn't involved.

right now I have a laptop that's not working on wireless due to this exact problem (ipw2200 driver, and I haven't taken the time to setup modules for it yet)

David Lang


On Wed, 19 Apr 2006, Jon Masters wrote:

Date: Wed, 19 Apr 2006 00:41:56 +0100
From: Jon Masters <[email protected]>
To: [email protected], [email protected]
Subject: [PATCH] MODULE_FIRMWARE for binary firmware(s)

From: Jon Masters <[email protected]>

Right now, various kernel modules are being migrated over to use
request_firmware in order to pull in binary firmware blobs from userland
when the module is loaded. This makes sense.

However, there is right now little mechanism in place to automatically
determine which binary firmware blobs must be included with a kernel in
order to satisfy the prerequisites of these drivers. This affects
vendors, but also regular users to a certain extent too.

The attached patch introduces MODULE_FIRMWARE as a mechanism for
advertising that a particular firmware file is to be loaded - it will
then show up via modinfo and could be used e.g. when packaging a kernel.

Signed-off-by: Jon Masters <[email protected]>

diff -urN linux-2.6.16.2_orig/include/linux/module.h linux-2.6.16.2_dev/include/linux/module.h
--- linux-2.6.16.2_orig/include/linux/module.h  2006-04-07 17:56:47.000000000 +0100
+++ linux-2.6.16.2_dev/include/linux/module.h   2006-04-12 13:51:56.000000000 +0100
@@ -155,6 +155,8 @@
*/
#define MODULE_VERSION(_version) MODULE_INFO(version, _version)

+#define MODULE_FIRMWARE(_firmware) MODULE_INFO(firmware, _firmware)
+
/* Given an address, look for it in the exception tables */
const struct exception_table_entry *search_exception_tables(unsigned long add);
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