On 2012-05-09, mark sullivan <mark.sulli...@gmx.fr> wrote: > I would like to hear your arguments on this and if there is a > simple way to disable fw_update and uninstall in general everything > propietary affecting the network card that I have not been warned > about.
In the cases of the firmware which is installed from a package, usually due to lack of redistribution rights, you can do this: # pkg_delete /var/db/pkg/*-firmware-* # echo 127.0.0.1 firmware.openbsd.org >> /etc/hosts >From your email it seems like this is possibly the main thing you're worried about and is pretty simple to remove/workaround. Other firmware exists in /etc/firmware which is part of the base system (fxp, bnx, myx etc) which never had a question, you could probably do this to remove it and make it hard to reinstall at update time:- # rm -rf /etc/firmware # touch /etc/firmware (tar doesn't like unpacking a dir over a file or vice-versa) There's also firmware / microcode compiled into some drivers like isp(4), see /sys/dev/microcode, you'll have to track down the relevant devices, remove them from kernel config and recompile. Other devices usually have the firmware on some type of rom, eeprom or flash storage device. You're presumably going to need a vendor-supplied tool or a soldering iron to uninstall these. None of the above are really supported though, and in all these cases the simplest way to avoid loading the firmware is to disconnect the relevant device, it will work just as well unplugged as without firmware,. If you're using a PC you should probably also be aware that there is likely to be bios-installed code which runs in system management mode behind the back of the OS, this is also proprietary and could also affect the network card and all other parts of the machine. Also some of the various management controllers you might find have pretty far-reaching capabilities in this respect.
