Re: Amendment: special exception for firmware because of technical limitations
On Thu, Aug 31, 2006 at 01:01:45AM -0400, Nathanael Nerode wrote:
> Sven Luther wrote:
> > and probably the absense of
> > initramfs support, as we have now.
>
> Yes, there was some complaint about the lack of easy support for
> installing the firmware in the initrd. Which is not technically a bug,
> but the lack of a feature (netmounted root for those boards which need
> firmware loading).
>
> Isn't this still an issue? :-/ Doesn't it require udev to run in the
> initramfs, and isn't that not-yet-ready? (Although desired upstream,
> from what I remember -- this is the "early userland" stuff)
Look at the thread on d-k shared with LKML, there is some discussion with
David Lang about the ipw2200 driver. I believe the current state is you can
tell the driver the path of the firmware file, and the driver will load it
from initramfs without other tools, not sure though.
> Frankly, people who netmount root and use network cards requiring firmware
> loading are a pretty small group. But it would be nice to make it work for
> them.
In debian, those people need a ramdisk anyway, and initramfs-tools can do
this, not sure if firmware support is there, but ity may be or at least easy
to implement.
Friendly,
Sven Luther
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