Comment 39 for bug 74004

On Mon, Oct 22, 2007 at 12:49:03PM -0000, Tore Anderson wrote:
> * Matt Zimmerman
> > There's no telling what sort of random garbage folks have lying
> > around in /lib/firmware. Which one should be preferred, theirs or
> > ours? What happens if they're using a custom hook to get the
> > firmware they want?
>
> Copy over both images to the same locations they're found on the root
> file system and you'll get the same behaviour in initramfs as when the
> system is finished booting. I don't know where firmware_helper looks
> first, but as long as the behaviour is consistent, does it really matter?

Good point; this shouldn't be much of a concern. Perhaps the worst that
could happen (barring implementation bugs) is that some amount of irrelevant
data is copied into initramfs.

I'm still inclined to be conservative about this; loading of drivers can be
finicky, and even a change which is demonstrably correct can break working
systems in the field.

--
 - mdz