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Old 12th September 2008
Tsuroerusu Tsuroerusu is offline
Real Name: Troels Just
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Quote:
Originally Posted by robbak View Post
I really don't know what you mean.
If you comment out the driver entries in the kernel config file, then they will not be linked into the kernel. The code for that module will be built, however, but it will be left as a loadable kernel module. You can control whether it builds the kernel modules in /etc/make.conf, but I do not know how.

Quote:
Originally Posted by robbak View Post
The only binary blobs that FreeBSD will use are the firmwares for some devices, like wireless adapters
Actually, it's a bit more than that. If we look at the ath driver. The HAL for that is proprietary. hptmv and hptrr also have binary-only components. nve, uses NVIDIA's binary-only Linux blob for the nForce chipset. This is not firmware, this is stuff that actually runs in the OS at some level.

Quote:
Originally Posted by robbak View Post
Sure, we would like the source code for that, but you'd expect it to be mostly in assembler anyway, which does not tell you much more than the binary anyway. After all, it is no different from a device with firmware in flash ram.
Which I why I said I didn't mind firmware all that much. I mentioned the Intel drivers just in order to be "complete" in the sense that if needed, people could have mentioned those as well.

Let's just say my view on blobs are very, dare I say, Theo de Raadt-style.


Anyway, thank you guys for your replies I really appreciate it, and thanks a lot for replying so quickly.
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