Please disable long-obsolete CONFIG_FW_LOADER_USER_HELPER

[Martin Pitt]

The kernel has been able to load firmware by itself for several years now, and as a result the userspace loading of firmware got dropped in udev three years ago (https://github.com/systemd/systemd/commit/be2ea723b1d0).

But Ubuntu's kernels still enable CONFIG_FW_LOADER_USER_HELPER=y. This will cause 60 second delays, unless we explicitly signal the kernel back from userspace that we don't use an userspace helper (see /lib/udev/rules.d/50-firmware.rules). This is a pointless and resource wasting no-op.

Can we please disable this config option by default? After three years there's no sign of the userspace stuff ever coming back. It would also be high time to change the default upstream of course.

Thanks!

[Tim Gardner (timg-tpi)]

Martin - We'll also have to disable CONFIG_DELL_RBU ("BIOS update support for DELL systems via sysfs"). Is that reasonable ? I don't know how Dell machines are updated these days.

[Mario Limonciello (superm1)]

I'm currently working on a patch set for Dell rbu and user space tools that would allow it to work without userspace helper, but it's not yet ready to go. Can you please wait until that's done to make this change in Ubuntu?

Dell RBU is still in use.

[Mario Limonciello (superm1)]

Also isn't there a second kernel module using this functionality still? I seem to recall Dell RBU and something else both used it.

[Martin Pitt (pitti)]

Oh, curious that CONFIG_DELL_RBU depends on the userspace firmware helper (as a BIOS update sounds like the communication and request goes from userspace to kernel, not the other way around?).

Anyway, this isn't urgent at all, so if it's not appropriate at that time, please just close it.

[Mario Limonciello (superm1)]

There has been some discussion about this.

Dell EMC systems don't require this setting anymore.
Dell client systems are not using it either.

I'm sending a patch to change the behavior of dell_rbu to LKML.
http://www.spinics.net/lists/kernel/msg2257436.html

Please feel free to change the config setting in Ubuntu.