ipw2200 and update to TC 1.3

[szegey]

Hi!

With TC 1.2 I had to manually (via bootlocal.sh) modprobe ipw2200 and copy the card's firmware to /lib/firmware (via .filetool.lst). Now TC 1.3 automatically loads the module on boot. The problem is that it doesn't find the firmware as at the time of loading, the firmware is not yet put into place. The result is that the module gives an error and the wlan connection fails.

I solved this problem by unloading and reloading the module in bootlocal.sh. It's not very elegant

Is there any other way to get the firmware to the right place so that the dynamic loading of the module doesn't fail?

[curaga]

Creating an extension out of the firmware should work.

It should go something like this:

cd /
tar cvzf tmp/intel-firmware.tce lib/firmware/my-fw-name.fw

If you then put this extension into your tce folder, the firmware will be available to the extension module probing.

[szegey]

That worked!

And it's elegant 

Thanks curaga!

[tobiaus]

Creating an extension out of the firmware should work.

It should go something like this:

cd /
tar cvzf tmp/intel-firmware.tce lib/firmware/my-fw-name.fw

If you then put this extension into your tce folder, the firmware will be available to the extension module probing.

don't you have to reboot then? i don't understand the new 1.3+ system, what about cloud mode (or do cloud mode users just have to modprobe like they did before?)

[curaga]

Yeah, it's available on the next reboot onwards. Cloud users are kind of out of luck in these cases, because the firmware is not freely distributable, and so cannot be offered in the repo. They'd need to keep it locally somewhere (or download from intel every time), and modprobe after copying it.

[tobiaus]

Yeah, it's available on the next reboot onwards. Cloud users are kind of out of luck in these cases, because the firmware is not freely distributable,

i wasn't clear, my question was only about how modprobe works from 1.2 to 1.3 and up. it seems the "magic answer" now is to put the extension (or put whatever in your own tce file) in the tce folder, where it will be modprobed automatically on reboot. so are cloud users "kind of out of luck" on everything that needs to be modprobed now? i doubt it, but i still don't understand how you're supposed to use modules in newer versions of tc- without rebooting.

for example will cloud users have to do this from now on: (or is that only for modules in extensions stored with persistence?)

I solved this problem by unloading and reloading the module... It's not very elegant

[curaga]

Oh, I see. The automatic modprobing in 1.3 also happens during a normal tce-load.
It's meant to remove the need to manually modprobe, whenever possible. It doesn't remove the possibility to manually modprobe.

edit:

Here's an example:

Say I have a pci wlan card that doesn't need firmware, maybe a Ralink rt2x00.
In TC 1.2 and previous I'd need to modprobe the module myself, after loading the extension.

In TC 1.3 and onwards it's enough for me to load the wireless extension, and my wireless hardware becomes blinking and usable

[tobiaus]

thanks, so far i've only tried 1.3 in qemu, and i'm still mostly using 1.2. i suppose the next one i try will be 2.x.

[captainpotato]

curaga, thanks very much for your comments in this thread - I'm writing this using TCL 1.3 on a laptop using the ipw2100 firmware. Assuming that I can get the settings persistent, I am pretty sure that this will become the default OS on the machine.