b43 driver, firmware and kernel 2.6.23-0.135.rc3.git7.fc8

[John W. Linville]

On Sat, Aug 25, 2007 at 08:06:07PM +0100, David Woodhouse wrote:
> On Sat, 2007-08-25 at 19:44 +0200, Dino Leonardo Sangoi wrote:
> > Maybe a nicer way to handle these changes would be delivering the
> > needed package to the repositories, sending a heads-up to Fedora
> > testers list, and then changing the kernel.
 
Sorry, there is some slack in the system.  I think it is more important
to get the code available in rawhide.

> Yeah, John and I did discuss it briefly, and I think he was going to
> create a new b43-fwcutter package and submit it for review.

	http://download.fedora.redhat.com/pub/fedora/linux/development/i386/os/Packages/b43-fwcutter-008-1.fc8.i386.rpm
	http://download.fedora.redhat.com/pub/fedora/linux/updates/testing/7/i386/b43-fwcutter-008-1.fc7.i386.rpm

> Rawhide is... well, rawhide. You get to keep both pieces when it breaks.
> But I agree that before we switch F-7 to the new driver (which we'd like
> to do, because it's better), we should have a slightly more coherent
> strategy in place.

Actually, F-7 has the new driver.  I am carrying a patch there to
revert back to the old firmware format for the time being.

> If we could find a way to 'convert' the old-style extracted firmware to
> the new format, that would make it a lot easier -- it could be a %post
> script in b43-fwcutter then, and the new kernel could require
> b43-fwcutter (or conflict with bcm43xx-fwcutter, perhaps).

This would be nice, but I'm told it is impractical.  For one thing,
the 'supported' firmware list is a lot shorter for the b43 driver.

I'm not sure what I can say at the moment, but I am investigating
some possible options to resolve this issue nicely.

Hth!

John
-- 
John W. Linville
linville at redhat.com