Loading device firmware in kickstart

[John Summerfield]

Matt Fahrner wrote:
> Hi all,
> 
> We've built a kickstart image (initrd.img) with custom modules to 
> support the Intel PRO/Wireless 2200BG wireless card (it uses the 
> "ipw2200" module). As we've had experience with this before, getting the 
> module itself to load wasn't too hard, however in order for the card to 
> work it needs to load a firmware image as well. We believe that part is 
> failing.
> 
> What I've tried to do is put the firmware files in the same spot under 
> the "initrd" image as on a normal multi-user system, namely 
> "/lib/firmware". However as best as we can tell this isn't working.
> 
> We are going to try "/etc/firmware" as well, however I thought someone 
> might have had some experience with this before, so I am trying this 
> list. Does someone have some advice here?
> 
> Any help would be appreciated.

If you want this working during the install, I am not surprised what you 
do doesn't work.

I'm assuming you are booting local media, USB disk, CD or similar.

What I would do is explore what the existing scripts do for an installed 
system, and write and equivalent script to run in %pre.

It's a couple of years or more since I looked at this, but as I recall 
it's fairly simple:
echo something>somehere to say you want firmware loaded.
cat firmware >somewhereelse
echo somethingelse >somewhere to say firmware loading's done.

The trick is in finding out what to plop where. You don't really need 
all that general-purpose hardware detection stuff.




-- 

Cheers
John

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