firmware loading
Sam Leffler
sam at errno.com
Tue Dec 20 21:55:44 PST 2005
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
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