radeon module waiting for radeon-ucode

[Alexandre Oliva]

On Nov  7, 2012, Alexey Smirnoff <fling at member.fsf.org> wrote:

> Radeon module is waiting for a firmware from radeon-ucode package.

Do you have the radeon module built into the kernel or as a loadable
module?

> It is waiting even with not deblobbed kernel.

Aah!  Good to know it's not something I messed up!
Anyway, let me see if I can help you out.

> 60s delay is too much at boot, so it should be removed.

I tend to agree ;-)

> [    0.300309] radeon_cp.0: Missing Free firmware
> [   60.896195] radeon_cp: Failed to load firmware "/*(DEBLOBBED)*/"

Do you happen to know what hotplug script is in effect at the time of
the request?

E.g., if this module is built into the kernel, probably none whatsoever
(in which case it would make sense for the kernel to just abort the
request right away); if it's loaded early by initrd's init, then you
gotta make sure the init script configures a hotplug script for the
kernel to use, and that the hotplug script will let the kernel know if
it can't find the requested file (looks like it doesn't).

Even if the hotplug script is configured to wait for some filesystem to
be mounted or somesuch, you might want to adjust it to recognize
“/*(DEBLOBBED)*/” as the blob name and fail fast.  Depending on how it's
implemented, even creating a directory named '*(DEBLOBBED)*/' in
initrd's /lib/firmware might suffice.


I can't really fix this in GNU Linux-libre, because the whole point of
keeping the /*(DEBLOBBED)*/ request in place is to signal userland that
some (non-Free) firmware was requested by a kernel module.  I guess I
could shorten the timeout in reject_firmware, but the timeout is not
exposed on a per-request basis, so this would require some significant
improvements to the deblobbing machinery and changes to the firmware
loading machinery that I'd rather not get into, for I try to keep
changes WRT upstream to a minimum.


I hope this helps,

-- 
Alexandre Oliva, freedom fighter    http://FSFLA.org/~lxoliva/
You must be the change you wish to see in the world. -- Gandhi
Be Free! -- http://FSFLA.org/   FSF Latin America board member
Free Software Evangelist      Red Hat Brazil Compiler Engineer