Re: 2.6.28-git8: tg3 doesn't work due to firmware not loading (-git7 is ok)

On Sun, Jan 11, 2009 at 01:39:29PM -0800, David Miller wrote:

From: David Woodhouse <dwmw2@infradead.org>
Date: Sun, 11 Jan 2009 12:24:58 +0000

quoted

Other drivers will load the firmware later, at the time the device is
brought up. This means that even if you build the driver into the kernel
without its firmware, it can still request the firmware later, when you
try to start _using_ it. And when the file system is available.

For example, for mounting an NFS root using that device.... Oh, will I
need an initramfs for that once you pull the firmware-in-kernel
option?

To me, device probe is in fact the place to fail firmware discovery
for networking devices.  Because such a failure can mean you can't
mount your root filesystem.

David, is this the direction you want to take the fix?  I'm sitting on
a patch that elaborates on David Woodhouse's work which moves the
request_firmware call to tg3_open().  Before I posted it for comment,
I wanted to make sure the patch is moving in the right direction.