Kernel almost hangs when CONFIG_DRM_RADEON=y

[Peter Zijlstra]

On Mon, 2011-08-29 at 19:50 +0200, Peter Zijlstra wrote:
> On Mon, 2011-08-29 at 19:17 +0200, Borislav Petkov wrote:
> > On Mon, Aug 29, 2011 at 12:10:45PM -0400, Arnaud Lacombe wrote:
> > > do you want something ala:
> > > 
> > > config EXTRA_FIRMWARE
> > >     string
> > >     default ""
> > >     append "FOO" if BAR
> > >     append "FOZ" if BAZ
> > > 
> > > or maybe a new type "list" which would behave as a comma/space separated value.
> > > 
> > > config EXTRA_FIRMWARE
> > >     list "bla"
> > >     append "FOO" if BAR
> > >     append "FOZ" if BAZ
> > 
> > Yeah, actually Kyle's note (http://lkml.org/lkml/2011/8/29/289) makes
> > much more sense for linux and the whole firmware in the kernel deal.
> > So it looks like the drivers should be taught to wait for userspace to
> > appear instead of Kconfig helping them build-in firmware. And then we
> > should go ahead and remove CONFIG_EXTRA_FIRMWARE completely...
> 
> That would suck, suppose this radeon thing is the only console you've
> got (ppc64/sparc64 don't have text mode iirc) and userspace doesn't come
> up?

Same is true for NICs and netconsole of course. Not being able to stick
blobs into the kernel image would so suck.

Silently building a kernel without one and then getting stuck on boot,
only to figure out after much pain that you need EXTRA_FIRMWARE and the
more pain to figure out what blob to stick in is beyond crazy.