On Sat, May 05, 2012 at 07:18:25PM +0000, Stuart Henderson wrote:
> On 2012-05-05, Jan Stary <[email protected]> wrote:
> > Certain device's manpages refer to a firmware package to be installed.
> > I tried to install them all when installing to a USB flash drive, with
> > # cat /usr/share/man/man4/*.4 | grep http | grep firmware | xargs pkg_add
> >
> > That goes fine, but some devices already have a firmware package
> > that is newer than what is referenced in the manpage:
> >
> > Can't install athn-firmware-1.1 because of conflicts (athn-firmware-1.1p0)
> > Can't install iwn-firmware-5.6 because of conflicts (iwn-firmware-5.6p0)
> > Can't install rsu-firmware-1.1 because of conflicts (rsu-firmware-1.1p0)
> > Can't install uvideo-firmware-1.1 because of conflicts
> > (uvideo-firmware-1.2p0)
> >
> > (These four I have installed before; in fact, the installer gets
> > iwn and uvideo for me, and is is the newer one, which is good.)
> >
> > Looking at http://firmware.openbsd.org/firmware/ there is more.
> > Would a diff to the relevant manpages be helpful, or does someone
> > (possibly the people who prepared the newer firmware packages)
> > already have this on their mind?
>
> I'd prefer a diff to remove the full package names, people should
> generally just be using fw_update for these, in special cases
> where you want to 'pre-install' then pointing PKG_PATH at the right
> url (http://firmware.openbsd.org/firmware/5.1/ etc) then I would
> expect e.g. 'pkg_add iwn-firmware' to work.
>
> > Also, the firmware package at http://firmware.openbsd.org/firmware/
> > are immune to 'pkg_add -ui' - what is the rationale behind isolating
> > them like this, and not being regular packages?
>
> They are regular packages and should get updated *if* there are
> newer versions. That's exactly how fw_update gets them updated.
> They don't change very often though, you wouldn't normally
> expect them to update.
>
i agree with stuart. but i think a bit more needs done. right now i'm
not sure, and i don;t think our pages are clear, about when fw_update(1)
happens (do i have to run it, does the system ever run it?) and the
driver pages are unclear too. here's iwn(4):
...the firmware files cannot be included
and users have to download these files on their own.
other pages state simply that a firmware can be found at such and such a
location.
so i think what we want is for fw_update(1) to say if we expect users to
run it, or if sysmerge(1), for example, would run it, or just upgrading
(or whatever). and the driver pages should state consistently what we
recommend (and i have no idea what we recommend ;), and perhaps Xr
fw_update(1).
jmc
