Move wireless firmware to OFW device tree?

[Mitch Bradley]

Marcelo Tosatti wrote:
> (moving to olpc-devel)
>
> On Sat, Jan 27, 2007 at 02:53:07AM +0100, Arnd Bergmann wrote:
>
>   
>> Since we now have an Open Firmware based system, the libertas firmware
>> could be stored inside of the firmware device tree. The most significant
>> advantage of that is that you can boot with the libertas driver enabled
>> before mounting the file system.
>>
>> Another advantage is that if we get a forth implementation of the driver
>> that can do PXE boot, the open firmware can use the same copy of the
>> libertas firmware blob as Linux.
>>     
>
> Yeah, it does make sense to do it. However, we would have to think about
> the firmware upgrade process. This is sorted out now since its currently
> packed as an RPM on-flash.
>
> My knowledge one the OFW device tree is rather limited, can you store
> binary blob's such as firmware in it? Are any other architectures doing
> that already?
>   
The fundamental data type for device tree properties is "array of 
bytes", so it could export a firmware blob easily.
> BTW, how's the OF driver implementation work going?
>   
Lilian has it associating with several access points in her 
neighborhood, and pinging to her laptop, so we are getting pretty 
close.  We need to discuss what kinds of authentication we want to 
support and various other network management issues.