On Mon, Jun 09, 2008 at 11:08:57AM -0400, Jarod Wilson wrote: > Don Zickus wrote: >>>>> I suspect that (for now) we should make the kernel binary packages >>>>> depend on kernel-firmware? >>>>> >>>>> Should the package own the /lib/firmware/ directory? >>>>> >>>>> Ideally we'll want kernel-firmware to be a .noarch.rpm, but we can't get >>>>> that until we start to build it from a separate srpm. >>>> I assume the %install would cause a rebuild of the initrd to deal with >>>> storage device firmware on bootup? >>> The kernel install already does that. Perhaps we should ensure that >>> kernel-firmware gets updated before the kernel proper, to ensure that >>> the new firmware is included. >> >> Or maybe always rebuild initrd when installing kernel-firmware? It's a >> little overkill but handles scenarios when the vendor updates their >> storage blob but we have no new kernel update to go with it (that's >> probably a little long term thinking to handle the scenario when you >> actually separate the srpms..). > > I'd stick to rebuilding initrds only for a new kernel. Your issue of 'what > do I do if the new firmware is bunk' pops up if installing kernel-firmware > triggers a new initrd for an already functioning kernel. :) Hmm, that would cause issues. But then when folks like qlogic have new fw, how do you update it successfully? A stub kernel? Perhaps creating a new initrd based on the same kernel and a corresponding new grub entry (entry would consist of old kernel / new initrd image) would allow people to fallback to the old initrd image if the new one was bunk? > >>>> We were trying to do this with RHEL (jcm was working on this). One of the >>>> issues I brought up (which no one had a solution for) was the case for a >>>> bad firmware for storage devices. Currently they are built into the >>>> kernel. So if you stumble upon bad firmware, you just boot the previous >>>> working kernel. How would this be handled with everything under >>>> /lib/firmware? I guess a previously working initrd image might suffice. >>> Yeah, the previous kernel would have had its initrd generated when that >>> kernel was installed. That initrd should continue to work. >> >> Yeah, not sure why I didn't think of this months ago when I was discussing >> this with folks internally. > > Could still be an issue for any device that doesn't get brought up until > we've already spun up the kernel and initrd -- i.e., system boots off > internal disk, later during boot, brings up external storage on fibre > channel adapter, which loads its firmware from /lib/firmware. I didn't find that scenario interesting because you already have your rootfs mounted so you could do other tricks to recover from that. Cheers, Don _______________________________________________ Fedora-kernel-list mailing list Fedora-kernel-list@xxxxxxxxxx https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/fedora-kernel-list
