kernel 2.6.24 USB wi fi device firmware loading issue(s): rt73.bin...

[Matt Gessner]

On Wed, Feb 4, 2009 at 2:14 PM, Alan Nishioka <alan at nishioka.com> wrote:

> request_firmware uses the hotplug code so the kernel doesn't have any
> sourceless binaries compiled into it.  on init, the driver requests the
> firmware, user mode hotplug daemon loads the firmware from disk and gives
> the driver a pointer to it.
>
> since this is a short term problem, i would suggest converting rt73.bin to
> a header file and compiling it into the kernel.  you have to make a few
> minor changes to where request_firmware is called, but in the end firmware
> is just an array of bytes with a pointer to it.  this is what i did when i
> was testing usb wifi a little while ago.
>
> i am probably going to open source hell for suggesting this, but i'm a
> hardware engineer, so i am in hell already.
>
> alan nishioka


Yes, you will certainly burn for this.  :-)

Mike Timmons:

I'll show you how MINE works (and if someone out there can point out errors,
fire away -- I'm not making the claim that this is completely correct).  I
hope that this will be new and helpful information for you.  If it's not, my
apologies; feel free to dump this in the bit bucket.

In my /sbin/hotplug I have a bunch of stuff for doing field updates, but at
the very bottom, I have this:

if [ "$1" == "firmware" ] && [ "$ACTION" == "add" ]; then
  echo 1 > /sys/$DEVPATH/loading
  cat /lib/firmware/$FIRMWARE > /sys/$DEVPATH/data
  echo 0 > /sys/$DEVPATH/loading
  echo "RT73 firmware loaded." > /dev/console
fi

That's how the firmware is loaded.

caveat: I am using 2.6.25 in my system.  I have no idea what's changed from
.24 to .25 that might be getting in your way.  You could consider moving
just the section in .25 that deals with the chipsets in question (ralink, I
think??).

I put all this together in about an hour after doing a little reading.  It
all works very well.

Now if I could just get that pesky AP mode working...

Also in my hotplug script is

if [ "$1" == "net" ] && [ "$ACTION" == "add" ] && [ "$INTERFACE" == "wlan0"
]; then
  iwconfig wlan0 mode managed
  iwconfig wlan0 channel auto
  iwconfig wlan0 key DADADADADADADADADADADADADA
  iwconfig wlan0 essid mlxwap
fi

You will want to get the sources for the wifi utilities compiled for your
target, too.  Not hard to do.  I don't think I had to make any changes to
it.

Those who wish, feel free to post suggestions, etc.  I'm doing all of my
work on an ARM target, so I don't know if there are any gotchas in the rt
drivers for the rt73 usb stuff.

Also, you could check out rt2x00.serialmonkey.com if you haven't found it.
They are live (well, mostly dead) on #rt2x00 on freenode.

Good luck; if you have questions, feel free to email me directly.
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