The following reply was made to PR kern/32342; it has been noted by GNATS.

From: Iain Hibbert <plunky@rya-online.net>
To: gnats-bugs@netbsd.org
Cc: kern-bug-people@netbsd.org, gnats-admin@netbsd.org,
	netbsd-bugs@netbsd.org
Subject: Re: kern/32342: OpenBSD firmware loading framework
Date: Mon, 19 Dec 2005 22:46:16 +0000 (GMT)

 On Mon, 19 Dec 2005, Jason Thorpe wrote:
 
 > The following reply was made to PR kern/32342; it has been noted by GNATS.
 >
 > From: Jason Thorpe <thorpej@shagadelic.org>
 > To: gnats-bugs@netbsd.org
 > Cc: kern-bug-people@netbsd.org, gnats-admin@netbsd.org,
 > 	netbsd-bugs@netbsd.org
 > Subject: Re: kern/32342: OpenBSD firmware loading framework
 > Date: Mon, 19 Dec 2005 14:20:53 -0800
 >
 >  On Dec 19, 2005, at 2:10 PM, plunky@rya-online.net wrote:
 >
 >  > 	I want to load driver firmware file from inside the kernel and there
 >  > 	is no way currently to do that. Christos Zoulas mentioned on tech-
 >  > kern
 >  > 	that OpenBSD had a framwork to handle this so I took a look. This is
 >  > 	the result, please find below a shar archive containing two new
 >  > files:
 >  >
 >  > 		sys/dev/firmload.c
 >  > 		share/man/man9/load_firmware.9
 >
 >  I'm not sure I like this:
 >
 >  - Tries to read it all in at once (into a wired kernel buffer
 >  allocated from kmem_map).  It would be better to allow a driver to
 >  read in pieces at a time, potentially into pageable memory.
 
 that is true - there is an upper limit (seems rather generous currently)
 though and I would expect that since its firmware it would be written to
 the device then free()d ?  Thats what I just did for my device, not sure
 how it has generally been used in OpenBSD..
 
 I also did not especially like the mismatched
 
 load_firmware(..)
 free(.., M_DEVBUF)
 
 I think free_firmware() would be preferable, even if just a #define ?
 
 >  - It should be possible to set the directory search path via sysctl,
 >  rather than hard-coding "/etc/firmware".
 
 Ah, I thought something like that when I first looked at it, but forgot.
 Easy to add, however..
 
 hw.firmware.directory = /etc/firmware
 hw.firmware.max_size =
 
 ?
 
 iain