Re: [RFC v2 3/7] firmware: port built-in section to linker table

[Greg KH]

On Mon, May 02, 2016 at 11:34:33AM -0700, Kees Cook wrote:
> On Mon, Feb 29, 2016 at 10:56 AM, Luis R. Rodriguez <mcgrof@xxxxxxxx> wrote:
> > On Mon, Feb 29, 2016 at 10:12:50AM +0000, David Woodhouse wrote:
> >> On Fri, 2016-02-19 at 05:45 -0800, Luis R. Rodriguez wrote:
> >> > This ports built-in firmware to use linker tables,
> >> > this replaces the custom section solution with a
> >> > generic solution.
> >> >
> >> > This also demos the use of the .rodata (SECTION_RO)
> >> > linker tables.
> >> >
> >> > Tested with 0 built-in firmware, 1 and 2 built-in
> >> > firmwares successfully.
> >>
> >> I think we'd do better to rip this support out entirely. It just isn't
> >> needed; firmware can live in an initramfs and don't even need *any*
> >> actual running userspace support to load it from there these days, do
> >> we?
> >
> > I think this is reasonable if and only if we really don't know of anyone
> > out there not able to use initramfs. I'm happy to rip it out.
> 
> The changelog for this doesn't say anything about _why_ the change is
> being made? (and what about other architectures.) Also, Chrome OS
> doesn't use an initramfs (and plenty of other things don't too). Being
> able to build monolithic kernels (e.g. Android and Brillo) with
> builtin firmware is very handy. Please don't remove built-in firmware
> support.

I second this, we can't break existing systems at all.  I thought we
were going to keep built-in firmware, right Luis?

thanks,

greg k-h