Linux怎么知道驱动编译的日期,Linux内核如何知道在哪里查找驱动程序固件？

kernel(driver): calls request_firmware(&fw_entry, $FIRMWARE, device)

userspace:

- /sys/class/firmware/xxx/{loading,data} appear.

- hotplug gets called with a firmware identifier in $FIRMWARE

and the usual hotplug environment.

- hotplug: echo 1 > /sys/class/firmware/xxx/loading

kernel: Discard any previous partial load.

userspace:

- hotplug: cat appropriate_firmware_image > \

/sys/class/firmware/xxx/data

kernel: grows a buffer in PAGE_SIZE increments to hold the image as it

comes in.

userspace:

- hotplug: echo 0 > /sys/class/firmware/xxx/loading

kernel: request_firmware() returns and the driver has the firmware

image in fw_entry->{data,size}. If something went wrong

request_firmware() returns non-zero and fw_entry is set to

NULL.

kernel(driver): Driver code calls release_firmware(fw_entry) releasing

the firmware image and any related resource.

内核实际上根本不加载任何固件 . 它只是通知用户空间，“我想要一个名为xxx的固件”，并等待用户空间将固件映像传送回内核 .

现在，在Ubuntu 8.04上，

$ grep firmware /etc/udev/rules.d/80-program.rules

# Load firmware on demand

SUBSYSTEM=="firmware", ACTION=="add", RUN+="firmware_helper"

正如您所发现的那样， udev 配置为在内核请求固件时运行 firmware_helper .

$ apt-get source udev

Reading package lists... Done

Building dependency tree

Reading state information... Done

Need to get 312kB of source archives.

Get:1 http://us.archive.ubuntu.com hardy-security/main udev 117-8ubuntu0.2 (dsc) [716B]

Get:2 http://us.archive.ubuntu.com hardy-security/main udev 117-8ubuntu0.2 (tar) [245kB]

Get:3 http://us.archive.ubuntu.com hardy-security/main udev 117-8ubuntu0.2 (diff) [65.7kB]

Fetched 312kB in 1s (223kB/s)

gpg: Signature made Tue 14 Apr 2009 05:31:34 PM EDT using DSA key ID 17063E6D

gpg: Can't check signature: public key not found

dpkg-source: extracting udev in udev-117

dpkg-source: unpacking udev_117.orig.tar.gz

dpkg-source: applying ./udev_117-8ubuntu0.2.diff.gz

$ cd udev-117/

$ cat debian/patches/80-extras-firmware.patch

如果您阅读了源代码，您会发现Ubuntu写了一个 firmware_helper ，它是硬编码的，首先查找 /lib/modules/$(uname -r)/$FIRMWARE ，然后是 /lib/modules/$FIRMWARE ，没有其他位置 . 将其翻译为 sh ，它大致如下：

echo -n 1 > /sys/$DEVPATH/loading

cat /lib/firmware/$(uname -r)/$FIRMWARE > /sys/$DEVPATH/data \

|| cat /lib/firmware/$FIRMWARE > /sys/$DEVPATH/data

if [ $? = 0 ]; then

echo -n 1 > /sys/$DEVPATH/loading

echo -n -1 > /sys/$DEVPATH/loading

fi

这正是内核期望的格式 .

简而言之：Ubuntu的 udev 包具有始终首先在 /lib/firmware/$(uname -r) 中查找的自定义 . 此策略正在用户空间中处理 .