Contributed by rueda on from the got-dmesg? dept.
Hitherto,
fw_update(8)
has gathered system information largely from
/var/run/dmesg.boot
(on the host on which it is invoked).
Andrew Hewus Fresh (afresh1@) has
committed a change
which allows
specifying
an
arbitrary dmesg file.
The commit message explains the rationale:
CVSROOT: /cvs Module name: src Changes by: afresh1@cvs.openbsd.org 2025/03/21 18:33:34 Modified files: usr.sbin/fw_update: fw_update.8 fw_update.sh Log message: Allow using a different dmesg for driver detection This also solves an issue that jmc@ was having with installing downloaded firmware. (thanks for reporting) It also adjusts detecting the OpenBSD version from the dmesg instead of from sysctl while still allowing sysupgrade to override. I see two main uses for this, the first being downloading firmware to be used on a machine that doesn't have access to download for itself. The other would be for testing detection of devices in a dmesg for a machine you don't have or that is hard to test such as from the installer.
This is a very welcome change indeed!
At least one of the editors (and we suspect several of our readers) would have saved quite a bit of time while installing our favourite operating system on hardware that requires firmware that for some reason is not included in the install media, such as some recent-ish laptops.