> Upgrading a system from kernel 4.2 to 4.6rc7, there is an extra 2 minute delay > while booting due to these problems: > > [ 47.977221] bnx2x 0000:04:00.1: Direct firmware load for > bnx2x/bnx2x-e2- > 7.13.1.0.fw failed with error -2 ... > Could the driver fall back to an older firmware version more gracefully?
No. The internal FW isn't necessarily backward compatible [there are some Compatibility in fastpath in order to support VFs, but not in general]. Doing what you ask would means filling the driver with a lot of legacy code for older FWs, adding per-FW version HSI files, etc. So in short - if you've installed a fresh kernel on top of an existing distro that lacked the latest firmware in its filesystem, getting that missing .bin file from linux-firmware is the way to go. Cheers, Yuval
