A complete kernel-firmware package

[fondfire]

Today I was disappointed to be unable to boot porteus on a Dell blade server; the problem was that the bnx2 driver did not recognize the old Broadcom NICs within the blade. I tried to compile a new driver using Broadcoms sources, but it would not compile even though I downloaded the kernel source module.

I'm realizing that most of these problems seem to stem from (understandably) very incomplete kernel firmware in Porteus. For Porteus 1.1, I seem to remember that a kernel-firmware module was released. Could that be provided for Porteus 1.2 and Porteus 2.0 as well? Maybe I just need to look at the package manager again... I may have missed something.

Thanks for any help you can provide! I'm on a deadline and was hoping to use Porteus as my solution. ;-)

--fondfire

[brokenman]

This may help you along your way:

http://forum.porteus.org/viewtopic.php?f=39&t=1099

[fanthom]

@brokenman
bnx2 is an ethernet driver so broadcom wifi HOWTO wont help in this case

@fondfire

bnx2 driver did not recognize the old Broadcom NICs within the blade.

any chance to get /var/log/messages from that machine?
it would let me locate the problem (kernel driver or firmware)

most of these problems seem to stem from (understandably) very incomplete kernel firmware in Porteus

yes. we pull only 3MB of firmware and only for desktop hardware (majority of our users)

For Porteus 1.1, I seem to remember that a kernel-firmware module was released. Could that be provided for Porteus 1.2 and Porteus 2.0 as well?

kernel-firmware is included in 64bit repo but seems to be missing in 32bits.
this should be fixed when rc2 of porteus-2.0 is released.
for now please download slackware package from here:
link
and convert to xzm module.

if firmware pack wont resolve your issue then please provide mentioned /var/log/messages which is necessary (i have an access only to limited hardware).

[fondfire]

@fanthom

Lifesaver! Yeah, that package solved the issue. It was a lack of firmware. Entirely.

I think the problem the last time I posted about a similar issue, http://forum.porteus.org/viewtopic.php?f=61&t=1037, must've actually been due to firmware, not the tg3 driver itself. (And you mentioned in a later post, http://forum.porteus.org/viewtopic.php?f=81&t=911, that I was probably confusing firmware with drivers, which was exactly the issue, I'm afraid.) It's just that when I got the tg3 driver from Broadcom directly and compiled it, I believe it automagically rolled the firmware into the new driver; this led me to misunderstand the issue. (Please forgive me; not really a programmer or developer, just a self-trained sys-admin who has learned to love Linux. And Porteus.) I don't have the hardware that utilized the tg3 driver handy, so I can't absolutely confirm this, but I'm pretty sure that was the issue because I never tried to add firmware first.

I do encourage you to add the firmware package to the 32-bit version, too. If anybody else wants to use Porteus as a troubleshooting tool and utility horse in a data center environment, as I do, they're going to need all that damnable proprietary firmware and sometimes you've got to stick to 32-bit just to work with the widest range of hardware possible (though I might also like a way to use the two versions simultaneously, so that the 32-bit kernel only boots if it must and the 64-bit kernel boots otherwise; but let me not wishlist the heck out of you).

Porteus modularity is a big selling point for somebody like me. I know Unix-like systems and shell scripting, but not deeper stuff. I can make my own "embedded" set-up with something like this very rapidly and it's been quite helpful! Thanks again for the work y'all do here! :-D Porteus has definitely remained my favorite USB-bootable Linux.

--fondfire

[fondfire]

Just a couple of quick notes on some recent testing I was doing... Using Slackware 14.0's kernel-firmware-20120804git-noarch-1 package (and grabbing it with the Porteus Package Manager), I was able to utilize all the Broadcom NICs I could lay my hands on; that was not (at all) the case with the pre-existing Porteus kernel-firmware module, http://dl.porteus.org/x86_64/modules/ha ... arch-1.xzm, which didn't allow the use of even one Broadcom NIC I encountered. So, it may be worth updating the Porteus module repositories.

Again, I love how easy Porteus has made my work with USB-based portable Linux. Keep up the good work, guys! :-D

--fondfire

[fondfire]

Oh, and I was using Porteus 1.2 for all this. Looking forward to 2.0, though!