Date: Tue, 3 Jan 2012 13:20:53 +0000
From: Alan Cox <alan@lxorguk.ukuu.org.uk>
To: Jack Stone <jwjstone@fastmail.fm>
Cc: Oliver Neukum <oliver@neukum.org>,
	Matthew Garrett <mjg@redhat.com>,
	Linus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>,
	Alan Stern <stern@rowland.harvard.edu>,
	Dave Jones <davej@redhat.com>,
	Linux Kernel <linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org>,
	Larry Finger <Larry.Finger@lwfinger.net>,
	Chaoming Li <chaoming_li@realsil.com.cn>,
	"John W. Linville" <linville@tuxdriver.com>,
	Greg Kroah-Hartman <gregkh@suse.de>,
	USB list <linux-usb@vger.kernel.org>,
	Linux Wireless List <linux-wireless@vger.kernel.org>
Subject: Re: loading firmware while usermodehelper disabled.
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> That said, I guess there are more complicated / difficult pieces of
> hardware that might not do that. Is that the case here? Can we detect
> that the firmware needs reloading and have the primary driver "yield" to
> the firmware driver?

That doesn't really make any sense in the way USB works.

However if you've got a system to load and pin firmware *on suspend* and
flush it post resume then you don't actually need special 'firmware'
drivers just a slightly fancier lib/firmware that refcounts and handles
load on suspend/delayed flush.

(and probably a sysctl for cache tuning so that typical small firmwares
get cached on bigger boxes anyway for speed)