On Fri, Feb 23, 2007 at 11:56:36AM +0100, Thorsten Leemhuis wrote:
On 23.02.2007 11:35, Axel Thimm wrote:
>On Fri, Feb 23, 2007 at 10:51:18AM +0100, Thorsten Leemhuis wrote:
>>On 23.02.2007 10:32, Axel Thimm wrote:
>>>[...]
>>>I think what you want is to quickly select firmware packages. Maybe
>>>that's better done with having firmwares always prefix the package
>>>name instead with "firmware-"?
>>Sound like a nice idea to me.
>>BTW, do we have a definite description of what a firmware is
>does that fit?
>http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Firmware
Well, sure, but writing a single sentence like
>>(and what not). Something like "A firmware is uploaded to the flash
>>of a hardware device and executed there *and not* by the operating
>>system on the host cpu"
might be helpful without much work afaics. Especially the part "not
executed by the operating system on the host cpu" -- that part it not
that obvious in the wikipedia article, but important for us afaics.
Just to re-interate that...
see
fwupdate.com for Dell system BIOS RPMs. Distributable, not
modifiable, executed on the host CPU.
Name : system_bios_Precision_370 Relocations: (not relocatable)
Version : a08 Vendor: Dell
Release : 15.1 Build Date: Mon 12 Feb 2007 10:34:36 AM CST
Install Date: Sat 24 Feb 2007 07:35:41 PM CST Build Host: mdomsch-pe2850
Group : System Environment/Base Source RPM:
system_bios_Precision_370-a08-15.1.src.rpm
Size : 459333 License: Proprietary
Signature : DSA/SHA1, Tue 13 Feb 2007 12:39:37 PM CST, Key ID e74433e25e3d7775
Summary : BIOS upgrade package for System: Precision_370
Description :
This package contains BIOS update version a08 for System Precision_370
One can argue Fedora shouldn't be in the business of distributing
these, and I'd agree. (related to another thread on FAB, there
shouldn't be a problem with a hardware distributor adding a package to
their installs that provides a yum repo file pointing at their tree of
firmware though.)
I personally like using the license tag to describe rules such as
"proprietary, not modifiable, redistributable" rather than overloading
the name. In this case, we named them system_bios*, pci_firmware*,
and other names that are descriptive.
Thanks,
Matt
--
Matt Domsch
Software Architect
Dell Linux Solutions
linux.dell.com &
www.dell.com/linux
Linux on Dell mailing lists @
http://lists.us.dell.com