[GNU-linux-libre] Reducing firmware loading timeout

[christophe . jarry]

Dear freedom lovers,

I am trying to build a kernel image for Loongson 3A and suitable for
gNewSense (and potentially every GNU/linux-libre distribution intended
to run on Loongson 3A).

I used the kernel 3.5 modified by Lemote [1] as a base. Then, I ran
the deblob-3.5 script [2] locally. The machine I use for testing uses
the radeon video driver which loads a binary blob on vanilla
kernel. By default, the firmware loading timeout is 60 seconds and,
because the binary firmware has been removed after running the deblob
script, the deblobbed kernel waits 60 seconds for nothing at boot:
beside nothing is printed on the display during that time, this is a
serious time penalty.

In order to boot faster, it is possible to change the value of the
variable loading_timeout from the kernel file
drivers/base/firmware_class.c to something lower than 60, say 5:

    static int loading_timeout = 60;        /* In seconds */

becomes:

    static int loading_timeout = 5;        /* In seconds */

This change works as expected after a recompilation.

Christophe

[1] http://dev.lemote.com/cgit/linux-official.git/
[2] http://linux-libre.fsfla.org/pub/linux-libre/releases/3.5-gnu/