W: Possible missing firmware ???.fw.bin?? for module ??????.ko

[Adam Pribyl]

On Thu, 5 Nov 2009, Adam Williamson wrote:

> On Thu, 2009-11-05 at 00:17 -0600, Robert G. (Doc) Savage wrote:
>
>>   Installing     : kernel-2.6.31.5-115.fc12.x86_64
>> W: Possible missing firmware aic94xx-seq.fw for module aic94xx.ko
>> W: Possible missing firmware ql8100_fw.bin for module qla2xxx.ko
>>
>> This laptop may be a horse (quad cores), but it's not at all in the same
>> league as workstations/servers needing fibre channel cards to access SAN
>> storage. Why does this kernel seem to *expect* these files to be there,
>> then raise warnings when it doesn't find them? It seems to me the
>> overhelming majority of machines on which this kernel might be installed
>> would never have a need for a fiber channel card.
>
> It's not the kernel warning, AIUI, it's dracut. It just prints a warning
> for _any_ module in the initrd it's building that looks like it needs
> firmware which is not present. And because we build universal initrds by
> default with dracut, these modules go in even if they're not needed on
> your hardware.
>
> That's my understanding of the issue, anyway.

Exactly. I was asking about this few weeks ago. When the kernel-firmware 
package lags behind the kernel update, then dracut prints this warning. Me 
and Dave Jones voted for those warning to go under debug option only (see 
thread "dracut speed and kernel version"). Seems it is either in the 
queue, forgoten or Harald decided to not put them under debug.

> -- 
> Adam Williamson


Adam Pribyl