In article <amekgqbjcu.fsf@nutcracker.it.su.se>,
Love  <lha@stacken.kth.se> wrote:
>-=-=-=-=-=-
>
>
>christos@tac.gw.com (Christos Zoulas) writes:
>
>> In article <200501120859.37467.sverre@viewmark.com>,
>> Sverre Froyen  <sverre@viewmark.com> wrote:
>>>Hi,
>>>
>>>Now that Damien Bergamini's iwi driver is in the tree, it seems 
>>>pertinent to consider the location of the iwictl program and the 
>>>associated Intel firmware.  Obviously, the firmware needs to be loaded 
>[...]
>>>PS This likely applies to the ipw driver as well.
>>
>> I would prefer that we don't grow 1 ctl program per driver and come
>> up with a generalized firmware loader infrastructure.
>
>Framework that the kernel could load the drivers firmware, userland
>program, or bootloader load a new module (just like kernel modules in
>FreeBSD), or all of the three ?

All three, in the order you mentioned them :-)
I.e. 
1. Have a framework that device drivers can use to load firmware.
2. Have a userland program that all drivers can use to load firmware.
Orthogonally:
a. Make everything a module.
b. Associate drivers with firmware files to be loaded upon probe.

christos