[dpdk-dev] Updating bnx2x firmware

Christian Ehrhardt christian.ehrhardt at canonical.com
Tue Mar 29 09:26:39 CEST 2016


Hi Thiago and Harish,
Ubuntus linux-firmware package has the latest versions of mid and end of
2015 (no newer yet as of today).
And as Harish pointed out any older will likely be untested/unsupported.

I like that you want to stick to the packaged content and I think your FW
in the linux-firmware package is up to date as of now.
The referred FW in the DPDK code is quite old (2012 according to the git).

But I think just changing the defines in the dpdk code to whatever is
current as of today won't solve it in the long term.
Neither for the package to carry a delta just for it (and bnx2 being a
disabled feature).
Nor for upstream-dpdk as it will just change over time and be incorrect
again.

What about a patch to upstream DPDK that detects the latest available FW
and creates a header with matching defines?
If the dpdk project would support such an approach you could create one and
bring it upstream.
Then later on (next dpdk release and it being packaged) it would always
detect and use the latest available - wouldn't that be what everybody would
want?


Christian Ehrhardt
Software Engineer, Ubuntu Server
Canonical Ltd

On Fri, Mar 25, 2016 at 2:31 AM, Martinx - ジェームズ <thiagocmartinsc at gmail.com>
wrote:

> On 24 March 2016 at 19:03, Harish Patil <harish.patil at qlogic.com> wrote:
>
> > >
> > >Guys,
> > >
> > > Currently, the bnx2x.c driver looks for the following firmware files
> > >(when
> > >PMD is enabled for it):
> > >
> > >---
> > >$ ~/sources/dpdk/dpdk-2.2.0/drivers/net/bnx2x$ grep lib\/firmware *
> > >bnx2x.c:#define FW_NAME_57711
> "/lib/firmware/bnx2x/bnx2x-e1h-7.2.51.0.fw"
> > >bnx2x.c:#define FW_NAME_57810 "/lib/firmware/bnx2x/bnx2x-e2-7.2.51.0.fw"
> > >---
> > >
> > > Files bnx2x-e1h-7.2.51.0.fw and bnx2x-e2-7.2.51.0.fw.
> > >
> > >
> > > However, on Ubuntu 16.04, the package linux-firmware comes with:
> > >
> > >---
> > >$ dpkg -L linux-firmware | grep -i bnx2x
> > >/lib/firmware/bnx2x/bnx2x-e1h-7.12.30.0.fw
> > >/lib/firmware/bnx2x/bnx2x-e1-7.12.30.0.fw
> > >/lib/firmware/bnx2x/bnx2x-e1-7.13.1.0.fw
> > >/lib/firmware/bnx2x/bnx2x-e2-7.12.30.0.fw
> > >/lib/firmware/bnx2x/bnx2x-e1h-7.13.1.0.fw
> > >/lib/firmware/bnx2x/bnx2x-e2-7.13.1.0.fw
> > >---
> > >
> > >
> > > Is it okay to just point bnx2x.c to a new version and rebuild it ?
> > >
> > > For example: bnx2x-e1h-7.13.1.0.fw and bnx2x-e2-7.13.1.0.fw ?
> > >
> > >
> > > I would prefer to not manually download old firmware from Github:
> > >
> > > https://github.com/cernekee/linux-firmware/tree/master/bnx2x
> > >
> > >
> > >Thanks,
> > >Thiago
> > >
> >
> > Hi Thiago
> > Any reason why you don’t prefer to get the required FW file from other
> > source?
> >
> > You can certainly download it from:
> >
> http://git.kernel.org/cgit/linux/kernel/git/firmware/linux-firmware.git/tre
> > e/bnx2x
> >
> > Any other FW is an untested combination.
> >
> > Thanks,
> > Harish
> >
>
> Hi Harish,
>
>  Sure, I can download the firmware files, no problem... I just prefer to
> stick with the packages/files from the distribution that I'm using (Ubuntu
> 16.04) but, on this case, I'll follow your recommendation.
>
>  I don't know why Ubuntu removed the previous firmware files out from
> "linux-firmware" package...
>
>  Thanks for posting the git.kernel.org link!
>
> Best,
> Thiago
>


More information about the dev mailing list