[OpenWrt-Devel] [PATCH] mac80211: install old firmware for ath9k-htc on target as well

[Alexey Brodkin]

Hi Paul,

On Tue, 2016-03-15 at 17:36 +0300, Paul Fertser wrote:
> Hello Alexey,
> 
> Alexey Brodkin <Alexey.Brodkin at synopsys.com> writes:
> > 
> > In commit
> > http://git.openwrt.org/?p=openwrt.git;a=commit;h=3990e15258808b145226d7e95332c4708f9f9463
> > I got rid of older ath9k_htc firmware in favor of newer ones.
> Please see
> https://git.kernel.org/cgit/linux/kernel/git/torvalds/linux.git/commit/?id=e904cf6fe23022cde4e0ea9d41601411a315a3dc
> for more details about the specific kernel change. Oleksij Rempel
> (ath9k_htc firmware maintainer) says that older kernels will work with
> firmware version 1.4.0 too if the filenames match older firmware. So
> probably to support all kernels currently in use the latest firmware
> should be installed to the old location. And once < 4.4 is phased out,
> you can move to the proper new location.

Frankly I don't see Oleksij says v1.4 could be moved on top of v1.3
file (I mean older file will be replaced).

What that patch does it allows developers to use another (3rd) firmware
blob from "/lib/firmware/ath9k_htc" with name "htc_[9271|7010]-1.dev.0.fw"
if special module arg "ath9k_htc use_dev_fw=1" is set.

Even though if replacement could work i.e. if we copy
"/lib/firmware/ath9k_htc/htc_[9271|7010]-1.4.0.fw" over
"/lib/firmware/htc_[9271|7010].fw" and USB dongle will work
(but first somebody must test it - and I cannot because I only have device
with OpenWRT with kernel 4.4) I don't see a reason to add this mess.

We're talking about extra ~100k of space. Does it worth these games?

I'd prefer strict solution which matches what all other distributions
including Buildroot and full-scale Fedora/Debian ones.

Moreover fixup on removal of the last <4.4 kernel will be much simpler -
we'll need just to remove a couple of extra lines but not modify paths
very carefully.

-Alexey
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