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

From: Jason Thorpe <thorpej@shagadelic.org>
To: Iain Hibbert <plunky@rya-online.net>
Cc: gnats-bugs@netbsd.org, 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 20:36:00 -0800

 On Dec 19, 2005, at 5:01 PM, Iain Hibbert wrote:
 
 > does the cz driver need to keep the image around to fiddle with  
 > later or
 > is it finished with once the attach is done? (do any drivers need  
 > to do
 > that?)  Necessarily I'm thinking that during startup there will be  
 > nothing
 > else competing for the use of the memory.
 
 The cz driver does it early in order to query some parameters about  
 the device.  But it could be deferred until first open, certainly.
 
 > Which makes me think of something else - would this actually be  
 > useful for
 > devices that load firmware as part of their configuration  
 > sequence?  The
 > pcmcia card does not load firmware until it is enabled (manually or  
 > rc.d)
 > but the cz card seems to do it in cz_attach - is the filesystem  
 > available
 > at this point?
 
 To use this interface at all, you have to wait until the root file  
 system is mounted.
 
 -- thorpej