NAME

     firmware_register, firmware_unregister, firmware_get, firmware_put — firmware image loading
     and management

SYNOPSIS

     #include <sys/param.h>
     #include <sys/systm.h>
     #include <sys/linker.h>
     #include <sys/firmware.h>

     struct firmware {
             const char      *name;          /* system-wide name */
             const void      *data;          /* location of image */
             size_t          datasize;       /* size of image in bytes */
             unsigned int    version;        /* version of the image */
     };

     const struct firmware *
     firmware_register(const char *imagename, const void *data, size_t datasize,
         unsigned int version, const struct firmware *parent);

     int
     firmware_unregister(const char *imagename);

     const struct firmware *
     firmware_get(const char *imagename);

     void
     firmware_put(const struct firmware *fp, int flags);

DESCRIPTION

     The firmware abstraction provides a convenient interface for loading firmware images into
     the kernel, and for accessing such images from kernel components.

     A firmware image (or image for brevity) is an opaque block of data residing in kernel
     memory.  It is associated to a unique imagename which constitutes a search key, and to an
     integer version number, which is also an opaque piece of information for the firmware
     subsystem.

     An image is registered with the firmware subsystem by calling the function
     firmware_register(), and unregistered by calling firmware_unregister().  These functions are
     usually (but not exclusively) called by specially crafted kernel modules that contain the
     firmware image.  The modules can be statically compiled in the kernel, or loaded by
     /boot/loader, manually at runtime, or on demand by the firmware subsystem.

     Clients of the firmware subsystem can request access to a given image by calling the
     function firmware_get() with the imagename they want as an argument.  If a matching image is
     not already registered, the firmware subsystem will try to load it using the mechanisms
     specified below (typically, a kernel module with firmware_register the same name as the
     image).

API DESCRIPTION

     The kernel firmware_register firmware API is made of the following functions:

     firmware_register() registers with the kernel an image of size datasize located at address
     data, under the name imagename.

     The function returns NULL on error (e.g. because an image with the same name already exists,
     or the image table is full), or a const struct firmware * pointer to the image requested.

     firmware_unregister() tries to unregister the firmware image imagename from the system.  The
     function is successful and returns 0 if there are no pending references to the image,
     otherwise it does not unregister the image and returns EBUSY.

     firmware_get() returns the requested firmware image.  If the image is not yet registered
     with the system, the function tries to load it.  This involves the linker subsystem and disk
     access, so firmware_get() must not be called with any locks (except for Giant).  Note also
     that if the firmware image is loaded from a filesystem it must already be mounted.  In
     particular this means that it may be necessary to defer requests from a driver attach method
     unless it is known the root filesystem is already mounted.

     On success, firmware_get() returns a pointer to the image description and increases the
     reference count for this image.  On failure, the function returns NULL.

     firmware_put() drops a reference to a firmware image.  The flags argument may be set to
     FIRMWARE_UNLOAD to indicate that firmware_put is free to reclaim resources associated with
     the firmware image if this is the last reference.  By default a firmware image will be
     deferred to a taskqueue(9) thread so the call may be done while holding a lock.  In certain
     cases, such as on driver detach, this cannot be allowed.

FIRMWARE LOADING MECHANISMS

     As mentioned before, any component of the system can register firmware images at any time by
     simply calling firmware_register().

     This is typically done when a module containing a firmware image is given control, whether
     compiled in, or preloaded by /boot/loader, or manually loaded with kldload(8).  However, a
     system can implement additional mechanisms to bring these images in memory before calling
     firmware_register().

     When firmware_get() does not find the requested image, it tries to load it using one of the
     available loading mechanisms.  At the moment, there is only one, namely Loadable kernel
     modules:

     A firmware image named foo is looked up by trying to load the module named foo.ko, using the
     facilities described in kld(4).  In particular, images are looked up in the directories
     specified by the sysctl variable kern.module_path which on most systems defaults to
     /boot/kernel;/boot/modules.

     Note that in case a module contains multiple images, the caller should first request a
     firmware_get() for the first image contained in the module, followed by requests for the
     other images.

BUILDING FIRMWARE LOADABLE MODULES

     A firmware module is built by embedding the firmware image into a suitable loadable kernel
     module that calls firmware_register() on loading, and firmware_unregister() on unloading.

     Various system scripts and makefiles let you build a module by simply writing a Makefile
     with the following entries:

             KMOD=   imagename
             FIRMWS= image_file:imagename[:version]
             .include <bsd.kmod.mk>

     where KMOD is the basename of the module; FIRMWS is a list of colon-separated tuples
     indicating the image_file's to be embedded in the module, the imagename and version of each
     firmware image.

     If you need to embed firmware images into a system, you should write appropriate entries in
     the <files.arch> file, e.g. this example is from sys/arm/xscale/ixp425/files.ixp425:

     ixp425_npe_fw.c                         optional npe_fw                 \
             compile-with    "${AWK} -f $S/tools/fw_stub.awk                 \
                             IxNpeMicrocode.dat:npe_fw -mnpe -c${.TARGET}"   \
             no-implicit-rule before-depend local                            \
             clean           "ixp425_npe_fw.c"
     #
     # NB: ld encodes the path in the binary symbols generated for the
     #     firmware image so link the file to the object directory to
     #     get known values for reference in the _fw.c file.
     #
     IxNpeMicrocode.fwo  optional npe_fw                                     \
             dependency      "IxNpeMicrocode.dat"                            \
             compile-with    "${LD} -b binary -d -warn-common                \
                                 -r -d -o ${.TARGET} IxNpeMicrocode.dat"     \
             no-implicit-rule                                                \
             clean           "IxNpeMicrocode.fwo"
     IxNpeMicrocode.dat                      optional npe_fw                 \
             dependency      ".PHONY"                                        \
             compile-with    "uudecode < $S/contrib/dev/npe/IxNpeMicrocode.dat.uu" \
             no-obj no-implicit-rule                                         \
             clean           "IxNpeMicrocode.dat"

     Note that generating the firmware modules in this way requires the availability of the
     following tools: awk(1), make(1), the compiler and the linker.

SEE ALSO

     kld(4), module(9)

     /usr/share/examples/kld/firmware

HISTORY

     The firmware system was introduced in FreeBSD 6.1.

AUTHORS

     This manual page was written by Max Laier <mlaier@FreeBSD.org>.