Re: log spammed with "loading xx failed with error -2" since commit e40ba6d56b [replace call to fw_read_file_contents() with kernel version]

From: Mimi Zohar
Date: Sat Feb 27 2016 - 19:19:41 EST


On Sun, 2016-02-28 at 00:15 +0100, Luis R. Rodriguez wrote:
> On Sat, Feb 27, 2016 at 05:49:38PM +0100, Heiner Kallweit wrote:
> > Since this commit my system log is spammed with firmware load errors. One example:
> >
> > loading /lib/firmware/updates/4.5.0-rc5-next-20160226/iwlwifi-3160-16.ucode failed with error -2
> > loading /lib/firmware/updates/iwlwifi-3160-16.ucode failed with error -2
> > loading /lib/firmware/4.5.0-rc5-next-20160226/iwlwifi-3160-16.ucode failed with error -2
> > -> finally load attempt from /lib/firmware/iwlwifi-3160-16.ucode succeeds
> >
> > Before this commit, when a load from one path in fw_path failed, silently the next path was tried.
> > Only if all attempts failed an error message was printed.
> > Now for each single failed attempt an error message is printed what doesn't make sense.
>
> To be clear, this is an issue on linux-next, due to the latest merge
> of Mimi's common kernel file loader pulled recently by James.

It looks like commit "3e358ac firmware: Be a bit more verbose about
direct firmware loading failure", made the change. Then commit ed04630
"firmware: simplify dev_*() print messages for generic helper" modified
the message.

Mimi

> Heiner, thanks for the report, this patch fixes that. I'll be submitting that
> now. James, should this go through your tree? Please note I've been meaning to
> add myself to MAINTAINERS for FIRMWARE_CLASS as requested by Greg at kernel
> summit as I've been helping with cleanup there but I hadn't done so as I had
> some pending patches with a full new functionality added. With Mimi's changes
> merged on linux-next though and the common kernel file loader now done I can
> follow up with my series of changes after this.
>
> Luis
>
> From 92e2bd76bf1abb3ce381b8d54ba5486a295af1a9 Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001
> From: "Luis R. Rodriguez" <mcgrof@xxxxxxxxxx>
> Date: Sat, 27 Feb 2016 14:58:08 -0800
> Subject: [PATCH] firmware: change kernel read fail to dev_dbg()
>
> When we now use the new kernel_read_file_from_path() we
> are reporting a failure when we iterate over all the paths
> possible for firmware. Before using kernel_read_file_from_path()
> we only reported a failure once we confirmed a file existed
> with filp_open() but failed with fw_read_file_contents().
>
> With kernel_read_file_from_path() both are done for us and
> we obviously are now reporting too much information given that
> some optional paths will always fail and clutter the logs.
>
> fw_get_filesystem_firmware() already has a check for failure
> and uses an internal flag, FW_OPT_NO_WARN, to let users
> warn or not warn. For instance request_firmware_direct()
> does not warn as this can be used for optional firmware
> as it has no usermode helper fallback. In the future we
> may want to change this, given everyone is disabling the
> usermode helper anyway now, but for now keep reporting
> only as was designed. request_firmware_direct() will
> continue to not report errors as it was designed not to.
>
> Reported-by: Heiner Kallweit <hkallweit1@xxxxxxxxx>
> Cc: Heiner Kallweit <hkallweit1@xxxxxxxxx>
> Cc: Mimi Zohar <zohar@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
> Cc: Kees Cook <keescook@xxxxxxxxxxxx>
> Signed-off-by: Luis R. Rodriguez <mcgrof@xxxxxxxxxx>
> ---
> drivers/base/firmware_class.c | 2 +-
> 1 file changed, 1 insertion(+), 1 deletion(-)
>
> diff --git a/drivers/base/firmware_class.c b/drivers/base/firmware_class.c
> index 1cff832ab74e..b1cf4d61ffc9 100644
> --- a/drivers/base/firmware_class.c
> +++ b/drivers/base/firmware_class.c
> @@ -328,7 +328,7 @@ static int fw_get_filesystem_firmware(struct device *device,
> rc = kernel_read_file_from_path(path, &buf->data, &size,
> INT_MAX, READING_FIRMWARE);
> if (rc) {
> - dev_warn(device, "loading %s failed with error %d\n",
> + dev_dbg(device, "loading %s failed with error %d\n",
> path, rc);
> continue;
> }