On 10/13/2012 8:12 AM, Lisi wrote: > On Saturday 13 October 2012 12:42:52 Kaushal Shriyan wrote: >> What is the difference between drivers and firmware blobs. > > I actually said "binary blob". I would not have used the term "firmware > blob". In fact, that is the first time that I have seen it used. Firmware > is just firmware! (And no, I am not challenging people ot come up with the > maximum possible of other ways of saying it.)
See the "Device firmware" section of the Wikipedia article you cited: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Binary_blob That's a "firmware blob". Though the OP's problems are not related to binary blobs as mainline Linux has drivers for both of the devices causing problems. The Dell PERC cards are OEM LSI MegaRAID HBAs with Dell specific BIOS and slightly different firmware. As with the LSI HBAs, oldere PERCs will use the mainline megaraid_sas driver, while newer models will need the megaraid_newgen mainline driver. The latter driver is labeled as NEW in vanilla 3.2.6. If the PERC model the OP has is one of the newer models, this may tend to explain why the 2.6.32-5 kernel in the Squeeze installer doesn't work with his PERC. In the case of the Broadcom 5720 based 4 port daughter card, it's either a firmware blob issue, an old driver issue, or maybe both, as the Broadcom NetExtreme II GbE ASICs are supported by the mainline bnx2 driver, at least as of 3.2.6. Again, I can't can't confirm this for 2.6.32-5 as I don't have that source available. As Martin suggested, the OP should try the Testing installer as it should at least have the drivers needed by his PERC, as well as the driver for his Broadcom NICs, if not the Broadcom firmware blob, if one is required. I don't know if the Broadcoms use external firmware files. Given the cost of a quad port NIC I wouldn't think they'd skimp on the cost of a flash chip. Then again, firmware updates are much easier using the blob approach. -- Stan -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-user-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: http://lists.debian.org/5079f1cc.8070...@hardwarefreak.com
