From owner-freebsd-arch@FreeBSD.ORG Wed Dec 21 05:55:44 2005 Return-Path: X-Original-To: arch@freebsd.org Delivered-To: freebsd-arch@FreeBSD.ORG Received: from mx1.FreeBSD.org (mx1.freebsd.org [216.136.204.125]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 39FE416A41F for ; Wed, 21 Dec 2005 05:55:44 +0000 (GMT) (envelope-from sam@errno.com) Received: from ebb.errno.com (ebb.errno.com [69.12.149.25]) by mx1.FreeBSD.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id DFBAB43D62 for ; Wed, 21 Dec 2005 05:55:43 +0000 (GMT) (envelope-from sam@errno.com) Received: from [10.0.0.199] ([10.0.0.199]) (authenticated bits=0) by ebb.errno.com (8.12.9/8.12.6) with ESMTP id jBL5tgiE020111 (version=TLSv1/SSLv3 cipher=DHE-RSA-AES256-SHA bits=256 verify=NO); Tue, 20 Dec 2005 21:55:43 -0800 (PST) (envelope-from sam@errno.com) Message-ID: <43A8EE23.3010202@errno.com> Date: Tue, 20 Dec 2005 21:54:43 -0800 From: Sam Leffler Organization: Errno Consulting User-Agent: Mozilla Thunderbird 1.0.7 (Macintosh/20050923) X-Accept-Language: en-us, en MIME-Version: 1.0 To: arch@freebsd.org Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Cc: Subject: firmware loading X-BeenThere: freebsd-arch@freebsd.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.5 Precedence: list List-Id: Discussion related to FreeBSD architecture List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , X-List-Received-Date: Wed, 21 Dec 2005 05:55:44 -0000 Florent Thoumie and I have been working on some generic support for loading firmware using kld's. You can find a proof of concept at: http://www.freebsd.org/~sam/firmware.tgz It has code to manage firmware images and load them on demand by requesting a kld through standard facilities. Firmware is packaged using a genfw program that's included. You can package one or more firmware images in a single kld. I've packaged the iwi firmware as a boot image in a single kld + kld's for each operating mode that have two firmware images. The tarball also includes modified versions of the iwi and ipw drivers to use the code. I tested iwi, Florent is working on ipw. If you're interested in this stuff feel free to pick it up; I've run out of time to work on it. There are some potential issues with holding locks over the linker calls and the genfw program could use some TLC and probably a new name (plus the man page needs to be completed). It appears ispfw can be reworked to use this code. iwi and ipw definitely can use it. Not sure who else can/should use it. Sam