iwm not in GENERIC kernel

[Warner Losh]

On Sun, Oct 29, 2017 at 11:29 AM, Ngie Cooper (yaneurabeya) <
yaneurabeya at gmail.com> wrote:

>
> > On Oct 29, 2017, at 10:26, Kevin Oberman <rkoberman at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> …
>
> > But I thought that all modern wireless interfaces and many others load
> blobs. Is the source for the firmware blob for iwn (which is in GENERIC)
> available?
>
>         There’s a piece that’s open sourced that a BSD developer has
> written, but there’s also a binary payload that we have no insight into.
> Cheers,
> -Ngie
>
> $ file sys/contrib/dev/iwm/*.uu
> sys/contrib/dev/iwm/iwm-3160-16.fw.uu:  uuencoded or xxencoded, ASCII text
> sys/contrib/dev/iwm/iwm-3160-17.fw.uu:  uuencoded or xxencoded, ASCII text
> sys/contrib/dev/iwm/iwm-3160-9.fw.uu:   empty
> sys/contrib/dev/iwm/iwm-7260-16.fw.uu:  uuencoded or xxencoded, ASCII text
> sys/contrib/dev/iwm/iwm-7260-17.fw.uu:  uuencoded or xxencoded, ASCII text
> sys/contrib/dev/iwm/iwm-7260-9.fw.uu:   empty
> sys/contrib/dev/iwm/iwm-7265-16.fw.uu:  uuencoded or xxencoded, ASCII text
> sys/contrib/dev/iwm/iwm-7265-17.fw.uu:  uuencoded or xxencoded, ASCII text
> sys/contrib/dev/iwm/iwm-7265-9.fw.uu:   empty
> sys/contrib/dev/iwm/iwm-7265D-17.fw.uu: uuencoded or xxencoded, ASCII text
> sys/contrib/dev/iwm/iwm-7265D-22.fw.uu: uuencoded or xxencoded, ASCII text
> sys/contrib/dev/iwm/iwm-8000C-16.fw.uu: uuencoded or xxencoded, ASCII text
> sys/contrib/dev/iwm/iwm-8000C-17.fw.uu: uuencoded or xxencoded, ASCII text
> sys/contrib/dev/iwm/iwm-8000C-22.fw.uu: uuencoded or xxencoded, ASCII text
> sys/contrib/dev/iwm/iwm-8265-22.fw.uu:  uuencoded or xxencoded, ASCII text
>

The blobs run on the actual card itself, not on the host. This is the
firmware for the wireless SoC that's on the card. We have allowed those in
the kernel since the very early days of the project when scsi controllers
like isp(4) downloaded firmware.

This is somewhat different than the recently discussed HBAs that have
binary blobs that run on the host, which have no business in GENERIC...

Warner