Michal Kazior <michal.kazior@xxxxxxxxx> wrote: > Firmware files are versioned to prevent older > driver instances to load unsupported firmware > blobs. This is reflected with a fallback logic > which attempts to load several firmware files. > > This however produced a lot of unnecessary > warnings sometimes confusing users and leading > them to rename firmware files making things even > more confusing. > > Hence use request_firmware_direct() which does not > produce extra warnings. This shouldn't really > break anything because most modern systems don't > rely on udev/hotplug helpers to load firmware > files anymore. > > Signed-off-by: Michal Kazior <michal.kazior@xxxxxxxxx> This ended into a rather long discussion, see the full thread from the patchwork link below, but I'll try to summarise it here: * Nobody stepped up and mentioned that they need/use the user fallback helper with ath10k. * Felix confirmed that LEDE creates the calibration file before loading ath10k so this should not break LEDE. * This also fixes a 60 second delay per _each_ unexistent firmware/calibration file with distros which have CONFIG_FW_LOADER_USER_HELPER_FALLBACK enabled, RHEL being a notable example. Using ath10k with firmware-2.bin this might end up into a five minute delay in boot. * Luis is working on new drvdata interface for kernel, but that's not merged yet. Based on this I think the right approach is to apply this patch. Any concerns? While writing this I started to suspect is it just by accident that request_firmware_direct() does not print any error messages and request_firmware() again does print those? Let's hope nobody decides to change that. And at least Luis' drvdata interface has a documented 'optional' flag, so we can always switch to using that (once it's merged): * struct drvdata_req_params - driver data request parameters * @optional: if true it is not a hard requirement by the caller that this * file be present. An error will not be recorded if the file is not * found. Michal, do you mind if I'll add more info to the commit log and submit this RFC as a proper patch? It still seems to apply and work just fine. -- https://patchwork.kernel.org/patch/9237095/ Documentation about submitting wireless patches and checking status from patchwork: https://wireless.wiki.kernel.org/en/developers/documentation/submittingpatches
