From: "Rafael J. Wysocki" <rjw@sisk.pl>
To: David Woodhouse <dwmw2@infradead.org>
Subject: Re: [bug?] tg3: Failed to load firmware "tigon/tg3_tso.bin"
Date: Fri, 4 Jul 2008 00:27:16 +0200
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Cc: Jeff Garzik <jeff@garzik.org>, Theodore Tso <tytso@mit.edu>,
       Hugh Dickins <hugh@veritas.com>,
       Andrew Morton <akpm@linux-foundation.org>,
       KOSAKI Motohiro <kosaki.motohiro@jp.fujitsu.com>, mchan@broadcom.com,
       linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org, linux-mm@kvack.org,
       netdev@vger.kernel.org
References: <20080703020236.adaa51fa.akpm@linux-foundation.org> <200807032352.35056.rjw@sisk.pl> <486D4A92.2060004@infradead.org>
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On Thursday, 3 of July 2008, David Woodhouse wrote:
> Rafael J. Wysocki wrote:
> > On Thursday, 3 of July 2008, David Woodhouse wrote:
> >> Rafael J. Wysocki wrote:
> >>> Still, maybe we can add some kbuild magic to build the blobs along with
> >>> their modules and to install them under /lib/firmware (by default) when the
> >>> modules are installed in /lib/modules/... ?
> >> Something like appending this to Makefile?
> >>
> >> firmware_and_modules_install: firmware_install modules_install
> >>
> >> (I'm still wondering if we should make 'firmware_install' install to 
> >> /lib/firmware by default, instead of into the build tree as 
> >> 'headers_install' does. The Aunt Tillie answer would definitely be 
> >> 'yes', although that means it requires root privs; like modules_install 
> >> does.)
> > 
> > I would prefer 'make firmware_install' to just copy the blobs into specific
> > location in analogy with 'make modules_install', so that you can build the
> > blobs as a normal user (for example, on an NFS server) and then put them
> > into the right place as root (for example, on an NFS client that has no write
> > privilege on the server).
> 
> Not entirely sure which you mean. You _can't_ run 'make modules_install' 
> as a normal user, unless you override $(INSTALL_MOD_PATH) on the command 
> line.

Yes, I know that.

> Do you want 'make firmware_install' to be the same?

Yes, I'd prefer it to behave in the same way as 'make modules_install'.

I'd use a config option like BUILD_FIRMWARE_BLOBS that, if set, would make
the build system create firmware bin files in the same directories where the
driver's .o files are located.  Then, 'make firmware_install' would only copy
those bin files to wherever was appropriate (eg. /lib/firmware/).

Of course, there still would be a problem if there already were such firmware
files at the destination, but that would have to be resolved anyway by the user
wanting to install the new kernel along with the new firmware blobs.

> It isn't at the moment -- it installs to a subdirectory of the kernel build tree, like 
> 'make headers_install' does. But I'm not sure which is better.

IMO 'make headers_install' is used for a different purpose.  You don't have to
run it to be able to use the kernel in a usual way.

OTOH, everyone is familiar with the 'make modules_install' mechanics and it
seems natural to use analogous mechanics for firmware blobs.
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