Re: request_firmware() hotplug interface, third round.

[Manuel Estrada Sainz]

On Sat, May 17, 2003 at 02:47:44PM +1000, David Gibson wrote:
> On Fri, May 16, 2003 at 04:59:58PM -0700, Greg Kroah-Hartman wrote:
> > On Sat, May 17, 2003 at 01:37:52AM +0200, Manuel Estrada Sainz wrote:
> > > > > 	- Driver calls request_firmware()
> > > > 
> > > > Yeah, I agree with your comment in the code, I think a struct device *
> > > > should be passed here.  Or at least somewhere...
> > > 
> > >  To make compatibility with 2.4 kernel easier, I think that I'll add a
> > >  new 'struct device *' parameter to request_firmware(). On 2.4 kernels
> > >  it can be an unused 'void *'. Does that sound too ugly?
> > 
> > Yeah, don't use void * if you can ever help it.  As there will be two
> > different versions for two different kernels, just don't have that
> > paramater, or make it a char * like you have now for 2.4.  That seems to
> > make sense for 2.4 where you don't have a struct device.
> > 
> > > > > 	- 'hotplug firmware' gets called with ACCTION=add
> > > > 
> > > > I don't see why you need to add a new environment variable in your
> > > > firmware_class_hotplug() call.  What is the FIRMWARE variable for, if we
> > > > already have a device symlink back to the device that is asking for the
> > > > firmware?  Oh, you don't have that :)
> > > 
> > >  The same device can ask for different firmware images.
> > 
> > Ah, that makes more sense now.  Ok, I have no problem with it.
> 
> Given this, would it be better to make the sysfs node name depend on
> which firmware we're loading - rather than "data" always. 

> I realise we could just require firmware requests for a particular
> device instance to be serialised, 

 I think that is a pretty good assumption.

 It won't be me how loads two different firmwares concurrently to the
 same device :)
 

> however my instinct says using different nodes would be more robust:

 It would also complicate both kernel and userspace code.

> it will be easier to figure out what's gone wrong if a script error 

 For this matter, I could add a readonly 'name' which gives you the same
 string as $FIRMWARE. That way if something goes wrong you can easily
 find out which firmware image the kernel is expecting.

> or a kernel bug has resulted in attempting to load two images at once.

 This will get caught, because sysfs won't allow two entries with the
 same name.

 Thanks

 	Manuel

-- 
--- Manuel Estrada Sainz <[e-mail]>
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Let us have the serenity to accept the things we cannot change, courage to
change the things we can, and wisdom to know the difference.