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ipw2100/ipw2200: note firmware loading caveat in Kconfig help text
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Most wireless drivers load their firmware at interface open time, which
generally occurs after the filesystem is available. However, the ipw drivers
load their firmware at probe time because firmware is required to read the
device MAC address. When built-in, probe happens before the filesystem is
available, hence device init will only complete successfully if the user
has made special arrangements (including firmware plus a loader in the
initramfs).

Note all this in the kconfig help text for both drivers.

Signed-off-by: Daniel Drake <dsd@gentoo.org>
Signed-off-by: Reinette Chatre <reinette.chatre@intel.com>
Signed-off-by: John W. Linville <linville@tuxdriver.com>
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Daniel Drake authored and John W. Linville committed Feb 29, 2008
1 parent 5200e8c commit 19ae3a6
Showing 1 changed file with 16 additions and 10 deletions.
26 changes: 16 additions & 10 deletions drivers/net/wireless/Kconfig
Original file line number Diff line number Diff line change
Expand Up @@ -146,12 +146,15 @@ config IPW2100
configure your card:

<http://www.hpl.hp.com/personal/Jean_Tourrilhes/Linux/Tools.html>.

It is recommended that you compile this driver as a module (M)
rather than built-in (Y). This driver requires firmware at device
initialization time, and when built-in this typically happens
before the filesystem is accessible (hence firmware will be
unavailable and initialization will fail). If you do choose to build
this driver into your kernel image, you can avoid this problem by
including the firmware and a firmware loader in an initramfs.

If you want to compile the driver as a module ( = code which can be
inserted in and removed from the running kernel whenever you want),
say M here and read <file:Documentation/kbuild/modules.txt>.
The module will be called ipw2100.ko.

config IPW2100_MONITOR
bool "Enable promiscuous mode"
depends on IPW2100
Expand Down Expand Up @@ -201,11 +204,14 @@ config IPW2200
configure your card:

<http://www.hpl.hp.com/personal/Jean_Tourrilhes/Linux/Tools.html>.

If you want to compile the driver as a module ( = code which can be
inserted in and removed from the running kernel whenever you want),
say M here and read <file:Documentation/kbuild/modules.txt>.
The module will be called ipw2200.ko.

It is recommended that you compile this driver as a module (M)
rather than built-in (Y). This driver requires firmware at device
initialization time, and when built-in this typically happens
before the filesystem is accessible (hence firmware will be
unavailable and initialization will fail). If you do choose to build
this driver into your kernel image, you can avoid this problem by
including the firmware and a firmware loader in an initramfs.

config IPW2200_MONITOR
bool "Enable promiscuous mode"
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