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Re: b43 firmware ABI change



On Fri, 2012-02-10 at 16:48 +0000, Ben Hutchings wrote:
> On Thu, Jan 26, 2012 at 09:40:08AM +0100, Fabrizio Regalli wrote:
> > Hi Ben,
> > 
> > kernel 3.2.x is arrived in unstable and it's time to discuss our open
> > point about b43-fwcutter package.
> 
> Sorry for the delay...

No worries.

> 
> OK.  Don't forget that kernel hooks may run under debconf, so you
> may need to redirect stdout to stderr.

Ok, noted.

> 
> >   - A kernel-specific directory is created at /lib/firmware if it does not
> >     exist.  For example, /lib/firmware/3.2.0-1-686-pae is created when
> >     configuring linux-image-3.2.0-1-686-pae (the b43 subdirectory is created
> >     at this location during firmware extraction by the b43-fwcutter utility).
> 
> So the extraction process is re-done for each installed kernel
> version?  The source (Windows driver?) is required to be kept
> around?

The multiple firmware version support introduces a potential annoyance:
downloading/extracting firmware during firmware-b43-installer package
installation, then again (likely the same firmware version) when
linux-image-* packages are configured (via /etc/kernel).

This could be made more efficient, such as storing completed
broadcom-wl-* file downloads permanently (until firmware-b43-installer
is purged) then re-using these as needed instead of downloading.

> >   - broadcom-wl 5.100.138 (firmware 666.2) is acquired and extracted for use
> >     with Linux 3.2 and later, broadcom-wl 5.10.56.27.3 (firmware 508.1084)
> >     is used for Linux 3.1 and earlier.
> > 
> >     * Providing firmware 666.2 allows BCM4331 based devices to
> >       be supported, as b43 received an initial implementation at Linux 3.2
> >       (B43_PHY_HT was enabled at linux-2.6 3.2~rc4-1~experimental.1).
> > 
> >   - If the firmware-b43-installer script is not supplied with a kernel
> >     version argument (e.g. manual invocation by superuser), `$uname -r` is
> >     used.
> >
> >   - chroot installs are still supported and are assumed to require the
> >     latest firmware; a message regarding use of Linux 3.2 for firmware 598
> >     and up is displayed, firmware is installed to /lib/firmware without a
> >     kernel version subdirectory.
> [...]
> 
> This all sounds sensible.

Thanks for your feedback.

Cheers,
Fabrizio

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