Re: some tiny and dumb questions

Alan Cox (alan@lxorguk.ukuu.org.uk)
Mon, 18 May 1998 14:00:09 +0100 (BST)


> > firmware should be linked directly into the module.
> > It's fairly simple to write a tool that translates an
> > arbitrary binary file into an equivalent C array declaration...
>
> I've always wondered why we need to do that. Couldn't we just
> create a .o file directly? The base name of the input file would
> be a good choice for the symbol name.

See hex2hex and bin2hex in drivers/sound. Hannu has already written them
for you. There are problems with this however. Firstly firmware is often
large, secondly a vendor building kernels for third parties may not have it.

Its generally better to support a 'load firmware' ioctl.

> the kernel and make that data itself available? When I get some time,
> I'd like to put full symbol information in the kernel like most
> other modern unix systems do.

You mean pack System.map on the end of the zImage perhaps as a second gzip
file ?

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