On Tue, Jun 6, 2017 at 6:41 PM, Larry Finger <larry.fin...@lwfinger.net> wrote: > On 06/06/2017 08:02 PM, João Paulo Rechi Vita wrote: >> >> Hello b43 developers, >> >> Is it possible to use b43-fwcutter to extract firmware from Windows >> drivers? The manpage says "Currently b43-fwcutter supports Apple MacOS >> X, Microsoft Windows and Linux drivers, but keep in mind that >> b43-fwcutter doesn't support all driver versions.", but looking at >> fwcutter_list.h I don't see entries for the windows drivers. Are >> offsets for windows drivers available somewhere? > > > The reason that you do not see any entries for Windows drivers is because > those drivers are stripped such that we can get the offsets, but not the > description for that particular firmware entry. One could go through each > one and identify the correspondence with other firmware sources, but that > would be very laborious and error prone. I have chosen not to try that > approach. > > What do you hope to gain from Windows firmware? Extracting firmware from the > Linux drivers should yield better firmware if the two operating systems have > different requirements. >
Thanks for your reply, Larry. The idea is to help non-techy users on dual-boot installations, when they have no other means to connect their Linux system to the internet. On Endless we support a very specific Windows+Endless dual-boot layout, so it is easy for us to find the Windows partition. We want grab the Windows drivers and extract the firmware files from them automatically when a compatible card is detected and the user is offline. I understand that there is some manual work involved on this, but are there any pointers on how to get the offsets from the Windows drivers? I could check if the extracted data matches anything we already know from the wl firmware. Also, you mention that firmware may be different due to different OS requirements -- I expected the hw (thus, also the firmware) to behave the same way despite which OS is running on the CPU. Maybe I'm being naive here? ...................................................................................... João Paulo Rechi Vita | +1.415.851.5778 | Endless _______________________________________________ b43-dev mailing list b43-dev@lists.infradead.org http://lists.infradead.org/mailman/listinfo/b43-dev
