bnx2 firmware loading?

[Michael Di Domenico]

On Tue, Dec 3, 2013 at 2:30 AM, Waldemar Brodkorb <wbx at openadk.org> wrote:
> Hi Michael,
> Michael Di Domenico wrote,
>
>> I'm trying to add a dell r710 into our diskless boot system.  On just
>> about all of the other machines in our data center i've had no trouble
>> with the tg3, e1000, and igb modules and have booted the systems just
>> fine.
>>
>> however, the dells have a bnx2 card which requires firmware files to
>> load.  this is where i'm stuck
>>
>> using busybox-1.19 and 2.6.32-358.23.2 (?, might be off a minor version number)
>>
>> I'm a little confused on the mdev system and whether it should be able
>> to load the drivers for this card without me issuing a modprobe (but
>> that might be for another email)
>>
>> when i try to do a 'modprobe bnx2', it fails with a message saying it
>> cannot load the firmware files 'bnx2/bnx-firmware-0.6.1b.fw'
>>
>> however, i do in fact have the firmware files in '/lib/firmware/bnx2'
>>
>> oddly enough the bnx2 module does load after the 'unable to load
>> firmware' error messages spit out, but no ethernet devices show up
>>
>> i'm *sure* i'm doing something wrong, but googling around hasn't shed
>> any answers
>>
>> any thoughts or directions?
>
> I think you need to add some firmware loader script to mdev.
> The last line of my mdev.conf contains following:
> .* 0:0 644 @/lib/mdev/init
>
> And /lib/mdev/init looks like:
> #!/bin/sh
> if [ "$SUBSYSTEM" == "firmware" ];then
>         logger "Firmware load for $FIRMWARE requested"
>         if [ "$ACTION" == "add" ];then
>                 if [ -e "/lib/firmware/$FIRMWARE" ];then
>                         logger "Firmware loading ..."
>                         echo 1 > /sys$DEVPATH/loading
>                         cat "/lib/firmware/$FIRMWARE" >
> /sys$DEVPATH/data
>                         echo 0 > /sys$DEVPATH/loading
>                         logger "finished."
>                 else
>                         logger "Firmware file $FIRMWARE not found"
>                         echo -1 > /sys$DEVPATH/loading
>                 fi
>         fi
> fi
>
> The loading of the firmware is not automatically done by mdev IIRC.


Looks like this fixed it.  I would suggest this be added to the mdev
busybox documentation, along with a, relatively safe, sample mdev.conf
file