[PATCH] dell_rbu: enhancements and fixes
BUG fixes:
The driver used to allocate memory with spinlock held which has been
fixed in this patch.
The driver was printing the entire buffer when it received a invalid
entry in image_type. The fix is to only print a warning message and not
the buffer.
Usability enhancements:
It is possible that due to user error the /sys/class/firmware/dell_rbu
entries might be missing, this can happen if the user does the following
echo 1 > /sys/class/firmware/dell_rbu/loading
echo 0 > /sys/class/firmware/dell_rbu/loading
This will make the entries in /sys/class/firmware/ to disappear and the
only way get them back was bby unloading and loading the driver.
This patch makes the user recreate these entries by echoing init in to
image_type.
This patch has been tested with Libsmbios and Dell OpenManage.
Signed-off-by: Abhay Salunke <Abhay_Salunke@dell.com>
Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@osdl.org>
Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@osdl.org>
diff --git a/Documentation/dell_rbu.txt b/Documentation/dell_rbu.txt
index bcfa5c3..95d7f62 100644
--- a/Documentation/dell_rbu.txt
+++ b/Documentation/dell_rbu.txt
@@ -13,6 +13,8 @@
and notebooks (starting from those sold in 2005).
Please go to http://support.dell.com register and you can find info on
OpenManage and Dell Update packages (DUP).
+Libsmbios can also be used to update BIOS on Dell systems go to
+http://linux.dell.com/libsmbios/ for details.
Dell_RBU driver supports BIOS update using the monilothic image and packetized
image methods. In case of moniolithic the driver allocates a contiguous chunk
@@ -22,8 +24,8 @@
maintains a link list of packets for reading them back.
If the dell_rbu driver is unloaded all the allocated memory is freed.
-The rbu driver needs to have an application which will inform the BIOS to
-enable the update in the next system reboot.
+The rbu driver needs to have an application (as mentioned above)which will
+inform the BIOS to enable the update in the next system reboot.
The user should not unload the rbu driver after downloading the BIOS image
or updating.
@@ -42,9 +44,11 @@
of contiguous memory and the BIOS image is scattered in these packets.
By default the driver uses monolithic memory for the update type. This can be
-changed to contiguous during the driver load time by specifying the load
+changed to packets during the driver load time by specifying the load
parameter image_type=packet. This can also be changed later as below
echo packet > /sys/devices/platform/dell_rbu/image_type
+Also echoing either mono ,packet or init in to image_type will free up the
+memory allocated by the driver.
Do the steps below to download the BIOS image.
1) echo 1 > /sys/class/firmware/dell_rbu/loading
@@ -53,9 +57,13 @@
The /sys/class/firmware/dell_rbu/ entries will remain till the following is
done.
-echo -1 > /sys/class/firmware/dell_rbu/loading
-
+echo -1 > /sys/class/firmware/dell_rbu/loading.
Until this step is completed the drivr cannot be unloaded.
+If an user by accident executes steps 1 and 3 above without executing step 2;
+it will make the /sys/class/firmware/dell_rbu/ entries to disappear.
+The entries can be recreated by doing the following
+echo init > /sys/devices/platform/dell_rbu/image_type
+NOTE: echoing init in image_type does not change it original value.
Also the driver provides /sys/devices/platform/dell_rbu/data readonly file to
read back the image downloaded. This is useful in case of packet update