booting the livecd with "experimental dopcmcia" detects and loads prism54 but it can't be used without firmware. /usr is symlinked to the cdrom so I can't copy the firmware to /usr/lib/hotplug/firmware/. Booting with the cdcache option doesn't do anything. Reproducible: Always Steps to Reproduce: 1.boot livecd 2.try to ifconfig up wireless interface Actual Results: prism54: request_firmware() failed for 'isl3890' Expected Results: working wireless
This could be a legal problem. The firmware is not GPL whareas the prism54 is now completely open source and I don't know Intersils position for packaging the firmware along with a distribution. The driver is downloadable at www.prism54.org ( I know another chicken-and-egg situation). I think this should be checked before adding the files to the LiveCD.
Peter, any comments about this one from your side? Are we supposed to offer that firmware stuff or are there any copyright issues that keep us away from doing that?
we should *NOT* distribute this firmware with the liveCDs yet. the prism54 developers are still in the process of trying to resolve the actual terms under which they can distribute firmware files. They've had an initial contact from Globalspan (the people who bought the guys who originally created the driver/chipset) but have had no official license agreed on, etc. You can see how frustrating this issue is just by looking at the prism54 firmware page here: http://prism54.org/firmware/ As sad as it is, i just don't feel comfortable including this until they've fully resolved that... ):
closing then
Closed.