Re: New iwn firmware & upgrade procedure

[mlelstv%serpens.de@localhost (Michael van Elst)]

he%NetBSD.org@localhost (Havard Eidnes) writes:

>1) Could the if_iwn driver fall back to using the 6000g2a-5 microcode
>   without any code changes?  (My gut feeling says "yes", but I have
>   no existence proof of that.)

The only change that happened was the update of the firmware blob.
But there is no code that would search for it.


>2) Should I have to extract parts of user-land in order to make the
>   wireless driver in the kernel work as intended?

That's how it is. It's true for kernel modules, it's true for most
firmware blobs.

At some point we probably need to make the kernel a kind of archive
or package that embeds all necessary parts for a change.


>What about GPU firmware?  I see it also has a new set all of its own,
>and some of the related compatibility questions can be raised there.

Often you need to change driver and firmware together. If the firmware
filenames aren't versioned (and currently they aren't), this may require
to exchange the files with the kernel or at least to provide alternate
search paths.