On Sun, Jul 09, 2006 at 05:01:49PM +0200, Arjan van de Ven wrote: > On Sun, 2006-07-09 at 14:21 +0200, Martin Langer wrote: > > On Sat, Jul 08, 2006 at 03:49:57PM +0200, Marcel Holtmann wrote: > > > Hi Arjan, > > > > > > > > It would be good if a driver knows which firmware version will be > > > > > written to the hardware. I'm talking about external firmware files > > > > > claimed by request_firmware(). > > > > > > > > > > We know so many different firmware files for bcm43xx and it becomes > > > > > more and more complicated without some firmware version management. > > > > > > > > > > This patch can create the md5sum of a firmware file. Then it looks > > > > > into > > > > > a table to figure out which version number is assigned to the > > > > > hashcode. > > > > > That table is placed in the driver code and an example for bcm43xx > > > > > comes > > > > > in my next mail. Any comments? > > > > > > > > why does this have to happen on the kernel side? Isn't it a lot easier > > > > and better to let the userspace side of things do this work, and even > > > > have a userspace file with the md5->version mapping? Or are there some > > > > practical considerations that make that hard to impossible? > > > > > > I fully agree that we shouldn't put firmware versioning into the kernel > > > drivers. The pattern you give to request_firmware() can be mapped to any > > > file on the file system. And you also have the link to the device object > > > and I prefer you export a sysfs file for the version so that the helper > > > application loading the firmware can pick the right file. > > > > Bcm43xx has no helper application to upload the firmware. > > yes it does. bcm43xx asks userspace to upload firmware (via > request_firmware() ) and a userspace app (udev most of the time) will > upload it. That app, eg udev, can do the md5sum and checking it against > a list of "known good" firmwares. Voila problem solved ;)
I see. It's an interesting way that I didn't noticed. Thanks for the guidance. Martin _______________________________________________ Bcm43xx-dev mailing list [email protected] http://lists.berlios.de/mailman/listinfo/bcm43xx-dev
