Re: Rejuvenated kernel-package uploaded to unstable, please test
On Tue, 14 Oct 2008, Paul Wise wrote:
> On Tue, Oct 14, 2008 at 2:38 PM, Manoj Srivastava <srivasta@debian.org> wrote:
> > Seems like upstream udev firmware loader does look at
> > /lib/firmware/$(uname -r)/, which seems sane.
> >
> > Why was this removed?
>
> It wasn't removed, upstream added that after the version of udev in Debian.
Not Debian. Ubuntu. And it caused quite a fight in LKML, too, which I
won't bother to repeat here.
Basically, there are three choices:
1. Package the firmware as the new kernel-package does (i.e. the Ubuntu way,
which upstream udev now supports).
2. Do not package firmware at all when doing kernel builds and packages.
People will have to get it from a firmware package (that doesn't exist),
which has a new upstream (that exists, but doesn't have all the firmware in
it yet), etc.
3. Add a new binary package to go along with the kernel-image, with the
firmware for that kernel version. If you version the dirs, it is just (1)
in a worse shape, so this calls for installing everything in /lib/firmware,
and letting only one such binary package per system. Which has severe
drawbacks if the firmware filenames are NOT versioned in the kernel code
(they ARE supposed to be versioned, and it is a bug if they change without
changing file name, except for bug fixes that are forward-and-backward
compatible). Obviously, old versions of the firmware are not kept around
forever inside the kernel tree, and it *will* cause issues with older
kernels that wanted that old version of the firmware. This should happen
*very* rarely (firmware really doesn't change much).
The thruth is that this whole crap was *designed* with the agenda to make it
as painful as possible for distros to distribute any in-kernel firmware, in
order to force leverage to get all in-kernel firmware out of the kernel.
--
"One disk to rule them all, One disk to find them. One disk to bring
them all and in the darkness grind them. In the Land of Redmond
where the shadows lie." -- The Silicon Valley Tarot
Henrique Holschuh
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