snd-asihpi firmware could be included in linux-firmware

I've subscribed Eliot and Chase to this bug now. Chase, if you feel like this isn't something for you, feel free to unsubscribe yourself or (better) reassign it to someone else.

Thanks!

Thanks David.

"there is not a good enough license information for asihpi in alsa-firmware, so we can't move it right over. I'm sure Eliot can help sort this out"

I expect I can. The licence in alsa-firmware was considered 'good enough' at the time,

For reference, here it is.
http://git.alsa-project.org/?p=alsa-firmware.git;a=blob;f=asihpi/licence.txt;h=31b0f0d7bdf12b230a9a36a044c80e8b3e0ee063;hb=HEAD

If you suggest what would be "good enough", I'll put it to the powers that be at AudioScience

"Eliot has stressed the importance of matching kernel driver and firmware version, so this has to be checked as well."

While it is not always strictly true that the versions must be an exact match, this is the ideal state to aim for. And from time to time things change so that DSP code version < X will not work with driver code >= X.

FYI our windows "driver" installers always include the equivalent of control application, userspace libs, kernel drivers and DSP firmware all with the same version. In this environment, a 'stable api' is the interface to the userspace libs, not the interface between driver and DSP,

I just took a look at the current license, and it's good enough for inclusion in linux-firmware. I'll work on moving this over. Note that when the package is uploaded, the firmware will need to be removed from the alsa-firmware package to prevent file conflcts.

Thanks for bringing this forward!

I was assuming that the driver for this firmware was in kernel or at least a part of an Ubuntu package somewhere. I haven't been able to find anything other than a link to the beta drivers tarball at [1] (the current drivers link is broken). Is this available in an Ubuntu package somewhere?

I'm fairly new to Ubuntu firmware maintenance, so I'm not positive of the best route if the driver is not included in any main Ubuntu packages. I will look into this and respond when I have more details.

[1] http://www.audioscience.com/internet/download/linux_drivers.htm

Now I remember what I found peculiar about the license. It is the line that says "Distributable under GPL" which confuses me. GPL, as in "Gnu General Public License", is a license which requires the source code to be distributed (or made available) - but there is no source code (at least not any source code to the firmware) included. Most distributions - including Ubuntu - accept binary-only firmware, so I suggest this line should be removed from the license. (With the usual "I'm not a lawyer" disclaimer.)

so it means that alsa-firmware will be a sub-package of linux-firmware ??

@David:

Yes, I agree that the GPL statement should be removed. Eliot, any issues with that?

@ttoine:

I'm not sure where you got that impression. Can you be more specific? The alsa-firmware package is not part of Ubuntu even, so there should be no hard coded interaction between the two.

@Toine: The long term goal is that linux-firmware should include all (legal parts) of alsa-firmware, so that alsa-firmware could be obsoleted. That's at least the impression I got when I talked to the upstream maintainer of linux-firmware.

After conferring with others on the kernel team, it's best if we only include firmware in linux-firmware for drivers that are provided by some Ubuntu package. Since there does not appear to be a package providing this driver in any of the Lucid archives, I feel we shouldn't include the firmware in our package. Here's my own suggestion for this case:

1. Work with the community to get the driver included in an Ubuntu package.
2. Send the firmware and license to David Woodhouse for his firmware tree, which we pull from. He may have a different set of standards, and this would be a separate path to getting the firmware into Ubuntu.

Of course, if you get step 1 done, then we can reconsider putting the firmware directly into our linux-firmware package. I hope you can understand that from a maintainability and liability aspect, its best for us to focus on providing firmware for which we provide drivers out of the box.

In the end, you are always free to continue providing the firmware and drivers outside of the Ubuntu archives as part of medibuntu or as part of a personal package archive.

@Chase -
In hardy it was in /lib/modules/2.6.24-16-generic/ubuntu/sound/alsa-driver/pci/asihpi/snd-asihpi.ko
In package linux-ubuntu-modules-2.6.24-16-generic
I assumed that this carried on for later versions.

Aha, Now its brother snd-pdplus is in linux-backports-modules-alsa-KVER

We have no issues with removing the GPL statement from the licence.

oops I didn't look hard enough

Driver is provided by linux-backports-modules-alsa-2.6.32-19-generic

/lib/modules/2.6.32-19-generic/updates/alsa/snd-asihpi.ko

David,

Thanks for this answer. Please consider that for the alsa-firmware in
Medibuntu, we already have done a licence check: contacting vendors,
checking that every file needed is included, and so, wipe out some of
the firmwares.

The current version in Lucid + Medibuntu of alsa-firmware, alsa-tools,
and alsa-tools-gui work out of the box for the cards I can test (RME and
Echo)

Perhaps it can be a good start to use the Medibuntu work to include the
firmware into linux-firmware. Then, alsa-firmware should be depreciated
for Ubuntu, and perhaps other distributions.

Think that not a lot of sound cards still need firmware, but only
professional sound cards, used for exemple with -rt kernel and Ardour at
lowlatency for audio recording and producing. It is a way to give a
credibility to Ubuntu and Gnu/Linux in that domain to make this kind of
hardware work out of the box.

Toine

Eliot,

Is it possible that other sound card firmwares may be already included
in linux-backports-modules ? So perhaps it is not necessary to maintain
alsa-firmware in Medibuntu ?

Toine

So then the question is, why isn't snd-asihpi.ko included in the linux-image-* packages, since that is what is currently keeping Chase from adding the firmware? How could there be a difference between the linux-image-* and the alsa backports modules here?

@Eliot: To try to find an answer to the question above, I went looking for the asihpi kernel driver in Linus' tree ( http://git.kernel.org/?p=linux/kernel/git/torvalds/linux-2.6.git;a=tree ), but I couldn't find it there. Is it there (i e I didn't search enough), or do you know why it isn't there?

I believe that's the base for Ubuntu's sound driver tree, so having the kernel driver there is important.

David Henningsson wrote:
> @Eliot: To try to find an answer to the question above, I went looking
> for the asihpi kernel driver in Linus' tree (
> http://git.kernel.org/?p=linux/kernel/git/torvalds/linux-2.6.git;a=tree
> ), but I couldn't find it there. Is it there (i e I didn't search
> enough), or do you know why it isn't there?

Sigh. asihpi driver comes from alsa-driver git repository. It is not in alsa-kernel repo, which AFAIK is what Linus pulls from for his tree.

So, it seems that out of tree drivers from alsa-driver repo are packaged into the -backports- package.

As for why this driver is not in alsa-kernel, you might have to ask the ALSA maintainers that question directly.

Now that I see the driver is available in l-b-m-alsa shipped in the main section, I think this firmware is suitable for linux-firmware. I will work to get it into 10.04, but I don't think it will get in before the release.

SRU Justification:

Impact: The firmware is needed for users to be able to use the sound card. Without the firmware a user would have to go without device support or download the firmware from elsewhere.

How Addressed: Adding the firmware to the linux-firmware package fixes the issue.

Patch: Please see http://kernel.ubuntu.com/git?p=cndougla/linux-firmware.git;a=commit;h=cf6291f0e49a854819df84b1b64f460dfdb97b86.

Reproduction: Boot with latest Lucid image on affected hardware. The sound card will not function.

Regression Potential: Practically zero as the firmware is new and does not overwrite existing files. The firmware will need to be removed from the alsa-firmware package maintained by Medibuntu when this is uploaded, but that's outside of the scope of Ubuntu.

Accepted linux-firmware into lucid-proposed, the package will build now and be available in a few hours. Please test and give feedback here. See https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Testing/EnableProposed for documentation how to enable and use -proposed. Thank you in advance!

This bug was fixed in the package linux-firmware - 1.34.1

---------------
linux-firmware (1.34.1) lucid-proposed; urgency=low

  [ Chase Douglas ]

  * Add AudioScience ASI series audio device firmware
    -LP: #557037
  * Add RealTek RTL8192E firmware
    -LP: #508746
  * Update firmware from rt2870sta
    -LP: #580926

  [ Tim Gardner ]

  * radeon: add evergreen family microcode.
    -LP: #560306
 -- Chase Douglas <email address hidden> Mon, 24 May 2010 17:51:17 -0400

What is the status of RME and Echo sound cards firmwares ?

Hi. I'm getting a conflict in Ubuntu Update Manager (Ubuntu 10.04):

E: /var/cache/apt/archives/linux-firmware_1.34.1_all.deb: trying to overwrite '/lib/firmware/asihpi/dsp2400.bin', which is also in package alsa-firmware 0

Apparently, the conflict is with alsa-firmware 0:1.0.17-0medibuntu2.8.10.1.

Thanks.
---Reed

alsa-firmware from medibuntu can be uninstalled if linux-firmware
include all firmwares for audio sound cards.

As alsa-firmware is not distributed in "restricted" by Ubuntu, Medibuntu
hosts it with several other restricted codecs or applications. If
linux-firmware can replace it, the more simple is to notify Medibuntu to
delete alsa-firmware from their repository.

Toine

I hope we will be able to incorporate (almost) all of alsa-firmware into linux-firmware for Maverick, this is a task on this blueprint: https://blueprints.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+spec/kernel-maverick-misc

As for the installation failure, I think this is a case where Medibuntu should adapt, by removing asihpi from linux-firmware.

Sorry, that should have been "Medibuntu should remove asihpi from alsa-firmware". Does anybody here have a contact with Medibuntu and can propose that they do so?

http://medibuntu.org/contact.php

But it will need a complete repackaging, and I am not sure they will do
it for Lucid, as they are not updating so often. The best is certainly
to include all alsa-firmware in linux-firmware, so alsa-firmware could
be depreciated and so, Medibuntu will not package it anymore.

It seems like this is already known in the medibuntu community, see bug #591886.