[elrepo] [elrepo-devel] Broken kmod-compat-wireless package

[Phil Perry]

On 24/08/12 21:18, ni at centergate.net wrote:
>
>> So, we have some new packages syncing to the mirrors in the testing
>> repository that should hopefully fix all issues that I'm aware of on
>> RHEL6.3
>>
>> kmod-compat-wireless-3.5.1-1.sn.el6.elrepo.i686.rpm
>> kmod-compat-wireless-3.5.1-1.sn.el6.elrepo.x86_64.rpm
>>
>> To update, please run:
>>
>> yum --enablerepo=elrepo-testing update kmod-compat-wireless
>>
>> and reboot.
>>
>> Some things to test / confirm please, if you are able:
>>
>> 1. These packages should *not* load the compat_firmware_class module
>> (lsmod should show this)
>>
>> 2. The updates udev rules we manually installed should not now be needed
>> so please remove them before testing:
>>
>> /lib/udev/compat_firmware.sh
>> /lib/udev/rules.d/50-compat_firmware.rules
>>
>> Be careful not to confuse these with the similarly named distro rules
>> that don't contain "compat" in their names.
>>
>> 3. There is now a bcm43xx-firmware package available that installs the
>> bcm43xx firmware files for the bcma driver (not the b43 driver), so Nick
>> could possibly test that.
>
>
> 1.) Ok, so I manually disabled "elrepo", enabled "elrepo-testing"
>
> 2.) removed the following from my system:
>
> kmod-compat-wireless-3.5-3.el6.elrepo.x86_64
>
> /lib/udev/compat_firmware.sh
> /lib/udev/rules.d/50-compat_firmware.rules
>
> /lib/firmware/brcm
>
> 3.) Rebooted
>
> 4.) Ran:  yum --enablerepo=elrepo-testing update kmod-compat-wireless
> and installed kmod-compat-wireless-3.5.1-1.sn.el6.elrepo.x86_64.rpm
>
> 5.) Rebooted
>

All good.

> 6.) Unable to get interface to come up, noticed the following errors:
>
> brcmsmac bcma0:0: firmware: requesting brcm/bcm43xx-0.fw
> brcmsmac bcma0:0: firmware: requesting brcm/bcm43xx_hdr-0.fw
>
>
> I *assumed* based on the above that these files would be installed by
> the new RPM. I may have been confused with #3 listed above.
>

Ah, there are no firmwares as part of the kmod-compat-wireless package - 
it just provides the drivers.

We do now have a firmware package that will provide these files for you:

http://elrepo.org/linux/elrepo/el6/x86_64/RPMS/bcm43xx-firmware-0.0-1.el6.elrepo.noarch.rpm

Question - we can make the firmwares packages a dependency of the 
kmod-compat-wireless package so when one installs kmod-compat-wireless 
it will also pull in all the firmwares, but this will literally pull in 
*all* firmwares, not just the firmware for your specific device.

We were planning to do this, but haven't done it yet. Good idea or not? 
The plus side is you hopefully get the required firmware automatically 
installed. The downside is you get a bunch of files installed on your 
system that aren't in any way relevant to your system.

> Once I copied over the files and manually loaded "brcmsmac" everything
> worked.
>

But as you've manually installed the firmware, that's fine :-)

Many thanks Nick for confirming this latest package works as expected.

Regards,

Phil