Bug 424609 – sys-kernel/vanilla-sources-3.4.*: mismatched version between bundled bnx2 firmware blob and broadcom/bnx2.c driver

• Status: RESOLVED FIXED
• Product: Gentoo Linux

[Description Anthony Basile 2012-07-03 13:42:02 UTC]

There is a mismatch between the version number of the bundled bnx2 firmware blob in all linux-3.4.* kernels and whats defined in drivers/net/ethernet/broadcom/bnx2.c.  This causes the Broadcom NetXtreme II Gigabit nic to fail to initialize on reboot = headache for remote admins.

The upstream commit is:

http://git.kernel.org/?p=linux/kernel/git/torvalds/linux.git;a=commitdiff;h=c2c20ef43d00b1439631e603f8dcee9a803cd8b3

There are a few solutions:

1) bundle the correct versions to match the defined values in FW_MIPS_FILE_*, FW_RV2P_FILE_*

2) Since the correct versions are in linux-firmware, we can force the depend.

3) We can patch bnx2.c to match the bundled firmware blob versions.

I took option 3 as an emergency fix for Chainsaw on hardened-sources-3.4.2-r1.  There are advantages and disavantages to each.

It looks like bnx2 has had a history of such mismatches: see bug #377865

[Comment 1 Anthony Basile 2012-07-03 13:44:39 UTC]

It goes without saying that this affects all our derivative kernels such as gentoo-sources.

[Comment 2 Mike Pagano 2012-07-03 23:12:03 UTC]

In svn for next release.

[Comment 3 Mike Pagano 2012-07-17 15:29:42 UTC]

Release in genpatches-3.4-6. In kernel gentoo-sources-3.4.5

[Comment 4 Olipro 2012-09-15 16:44:36 UTC]

This bug is still present for bnx2 NICs that require bnx2-mips-09-6.2.1b.fw

Alter the header to use bnx2-mips-09-6.2.1a.fw to resolve the problem.