Subject: Re: request_firmware() hotplug interface, third round.
From: Alan Cox <alan@lxorguk.ukuu.org.uk>
To: Oliver Neukum <oliver@neukum.org>
Cc: ranty@debian.org, LKML <linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org>,
       Simon Kelley <simon@thekelleys.org.uk>,
       "Downing, Thomas" <Thomas.Downing@ipc.com>, Greg KH <greg@kroah.com>,
       jt@hpl.hp.com, Pavel Roskin <proski@gnu.org>
In-Reply-To: <200305170022.29824.oliver@neukum.org>
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	 <200305161753.17198.oliver@neukum.org>
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	 <200305170022.29824.oliver@neukum.org>
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Date: 17 May 2003 14:23:32 +0100
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> >  If the device losses the firmware upon suspend, the driver will have to
> >  reinitialize it as if it just got plugged, which somehow makes all
> >  devices hotplugable.
> 
> So all firmware has to be permanently in RAM anyway?

Of course not you can just go back out to user space and ask for it

> > 	- In a diskless client, it is the network card

Already insoluble because of routing daemons.

> No, still no good. It means that you get a memory leak if you unload
> a driver before firmware is provided. You need the ability to explicitely
> cancel a request for firmware.

Only if you program it wrongly. Its not exactly hard.

As to an interface. The simplest is probably

	request_firmware()
and
	request_firmware_nowait(......, workqueuehandler)

The issues brought up about it failing appear bogus too, if the hotplug
run returns a non zero exit code you know about this already.

Alan

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