Subject: Convenient use of firmload(9)
To: None <tech-kern@netbsd.org>
From: Arnaud Lacombe <arnaud.lacombe.1@ulaval.ca>
List: tech-kern
Date: 01/17/2007 13:57:25
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Hi,

I was looking in the past few days at firmware and firmload(9). Some
firmware, expecially for network card are really huge; from the 13
object larger than 100k (from an i386 GENERIC build), 3 are network
drivers (atu*, bnx* and ti*).

I understand that firmware used to configure SCSI device could not
really be "externalized" from kernel[1], but could firmware for audio card
(yds*), pci serial board (cz*), usb device (atu*) or even network card
(bge*, bnx*, ti*) ?=20

A problem may appear when disk are not mounted and the device need the
firmware, so can firmload(9) be used for such PCI device (ie. could it
be possible to delay the initialisation after having the disk mounted
[2] ?). firmload(9) is does not provide information about this and it does
not seems to have been dicussed before on lists.

Thanks in advance,

 - Arnaud

[1]: it could be possible to have internal and external firmware,
and choosing between them at build-time.


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