New b43 firmware via ASUS/broadcom? postinst and documentation updates? downstream bugs?

[Larry Finger]

On 01/05/2016 01:38 AM, Drew Scott Daniels wrote:
> Hi,
> Thanks for all your work on the b43 drivers and tools.
>
> I have some questions that I'm hoping you can help answer, or help point
> me in the right direction:
>
> 1) Is there new firmware via ASUS?
>
> https://www.asus.com/us/Networking/RTAC66U/HelpDesk_Download/ says:
> Version 3.0.0.4.378.9313
> Description 	GPL of ASUS RT-AC66U for firmware 3.0.0.4.378.9313
> File Size 	567.48 MBytes update 2015/11/16
> Download from 	Global

It is new firmware for that ASUS AP, but it is impossible to tell whether the 
b43 firmware is new.

> "Global" is a link to
> http://dlcdnet.asus.com/pub/ASUS/wireless/RT-AC66U/GPL_RT_AC66U_30043789313.zip
> contains
> GPL_RT-AC66U_3.0.0.4.378.9313-g53ab20f.tgz
> contains other files and the following files (md5sum in front):
> ad1372a88f5ce40a1d1e6869d5c24580  asuswrt/License
> 27030a199072d086d746a679f4f23567
> asuswrt/release/src-rt-6.x/wl/sysdeps/RT-AC66U/linux/wl_ap.o
> 8ef6030e304f0906835b551928b7c510
> asuswrt/release/src-rt-6.x/wl/sysdeps/RT-AC66U/linux/wl_apsta.o
> 2cc734d9f9ba27c5922f351f6558aa54
> asuswrt/release/src-rt-6.x/wl/sysdeps/RT-AC66U/linux/wl_sta.o
>
> 2) Are these ASUS released files GPL that could be included in the Linux
> kernel?

The short answer is no. These .o files do have the b43 firmware included in 
them, but it would be useful only after extraction using b43-cutter. The 
resulting firmware files would not be redistributable. Including a file of 567 
MB in the kernel or in any distro will not happen. That is why the distros 
include a script to download some file and run fwcutter on it.

> asuswrt/License starts:
>
> DESCRIPTION
> --------------------------
> This product includes copyrighted third-party software licensed
> under the terms of the GNU General Public License. Please see
> The GNU General Public License for the exact terms and conditions
> of this license. All future firmware updates will also be accompanied
> with their respective source code. Please visit our web site for updated
> information. Note that we do not offer direct support for the distribution.
>
>
> 3) https://www.broadcom.com/support/802.11 also has a download to
> hybrid-v35_64-nodebug-pcoem-6_30_223_271.tar.gz with files dated
> 2015-09-18 including lib/wlc_hybrid.o_shipped with md5sum
> 6889dbd24abf8006de5cc6eddd138518. This looks newer than
> broadcom-wl-6.30.163.46.tar.bz2 which had support added in 2013 to
> fwcutter.
>
> It's hard to tell without trying to cut the files out, and I'm not sure if
> that's the right file.
>
> 4) http://linuxwireless.org/en/users/Drivers/b43/ lists b43-fwcutter-018
> but I see http://bues.ch/b43/fwcutter/ lists:
> b43-fwcutter-019.tar.bz2	25-Jun-2014 16:05 	46K

It appears the wiki needs an update.

> 5) http://linuxwireless.sipsolutions.net/en/users/Drivers/b43/ lists
> http://www.lwfinger.com/b43-firmware/broadcom-wl-5.100.138.tar.bz2 but
> http://linuxwireless.sipsolutions.net/en/users/Drivers/b43/developers/
> shows a table with a link to
> http://www.lwfinger.com/b43-firmware/broadcom-wl-6.30.163.46.tar.bz2 which
> looks newer. Does it not work as well as 5.100.138?

The wiki at en/users/Drivers/b43/ is out of date. I have no idea what the 
changes are between firmware version 666.2 and 784.2.

> 6) b43-fwcutter-0.19.tar.bz2 contains:
> ./debian/firmware-b43-installer/DEBIAN/postinst
> that downloads broadcom-wl-5.100.138.tar.bz2 and not 6.30.136.46
> Debian and Ubuntu b43-fwcutter_019-2 contain the same postinst.

I do not know who wrote that code and as I do not understand Debian installers, 
I will leave that question for them.

> 7) Debian, Ubuntu and Arch are all tracking issues with b43-fwcutter
> including file permissions being 750 or 755. See:
> https://launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/b43-fwcutter/+bugs
> https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/pkgreport.cgi?repeatmerged=yes&src=b43-fwcutter
> https://aur.archlinux.org/packages/b43-firmware/
> Fedora doesn't list any open bugs at
> https://apps.fedoraproject.org/packages/b43-fwcutter/ and doesn't seem to
> have the postinst script.
> There may be other issues being tracked in the other distributions like
> openSUSE.
>
> Are the file permissions intentional? Just needed temporarily?

The extracted firmware files are created with permissions 311, which is correct. 
If they end up with some other permissions in some distro, I expect that is a 
problem with their installation process. On my openSUSE 13.2 system, the 
permissions are correct.

Larry