So what has happened to the kernel's firmware?

stoat · 03-09-2018, 11:49 PM

Some firmware I have always had to provide. But others were included with the kernel such as tigon3, e100, and radeon, for example. Somewhere between v4.9.0 and v4.15.7, that stuff went away even though related devices can still be selected in the configuration editor.

Code:

[ /mnt/lfs/svn-170103/sources/linux-4.9 ]$ find . -name tg3*
./drivers/net/ethernet/broadcom/tg3.h
./drivers/net/ethernet/broadcom/tg3.c
./firmware/tigon/tg3.bin.ihex
./firmware/tigon/tg3_tso5.bin.ihex
./firmware/tigon/tg3_tso.bin.ihex
[ /mnt/lfs/svn-170103/sources/linux-4.9 ]$ find . -name d10*_ucode*
./firmware/e100/d101s_ucode.bin.ihex
./firmware/e100/d101m_ucode.bin.ihex
./firmware/e100/d102e_ucode.bin.ihex
[ /mnt/lfs/svn-170103/sources/linux-4.9 ]$ find . -name R*me.bin*
./firmware/radeon/RV630_me.bin.ihex
./firmware/radeon/RV770_me.bin.ihex
./firmware/radeon/RV620_me.bin.ihex
./firmware/radeon/RV710_me.bin.ihex
./firmware/radeon/RV670_me.bin.ihex
./firmware/radeon/RS780_me.bin.ihex
./firmware/radeon/RV635_me.bin.ihex
./firmware/radeon/R600_me.bin.ihex
./firmware/radeon/RV610_me.bin.ihex
./firmware/radeon/RV730_me.bin.ihex

Code:

[ /mnt/lfs/svn-180303/sources/linux-4.15.7 ]$ find . -name tg3*
./drivers/net/ethernet/broadcom/tg3.h
./drivers/net/ethernet/broadcom/tg3.c
[ /mnt/lfs/svn-180303/sources/linux-4.15.7 ]$  find . -name d10*_ucode*
[ /mnt/lfs/svn-180303/sources/linux-4.15.7 ]$
[ /mnt/lfs/svn-180303/sources/linux-4.15.7 ]$ find . -name R*me.bin*
[ /mnt/lfs/svn-180303/sources/linux-4.15.7 ]$

What memo did I not get? Or what am I doing wrong?

business_kid · 03-10-2018, 02:59 AM

AFAIK, some firmware was dropped from the kernel firmware. These are mainly what they view as 'trailing edge' hardware, or vanishing stuff.

Slackware's kernel-firmware package still includes the old firmware. If you grab an old kernel source and do a 'make firmware_install' on it, you can get the old files. Then repeat on the newer kernel source. That will overwrite updated firmware, but ignore files not included in the package.