Comment 15 for bug 180544

Still trying to track this one backwards ...

Just confirmed that if I revert to Gutsy 2.6.22 (keeping Hardy userland/udev/etc), then the ipfw2200 loads fine. The interface doesn't come up for reasons not yet known, but driver/firmware loads OK and a simple ifdown/ifup will fix the interface.

In Hardy 2.6.24, presumably we are running from initrd at the time of the new "early module load". My /boot/initrd.img-2.6.24-12-generic does not contain /lib/firmware at all. I wonder if firmware_loader is being correctly called, perhaps it is the initramfs that's being created wrongly ?

If so, this might also account for why some people find that reinstalling the kernel makes the problem go away: the initrd would be rebuilt.

I did have some problems with my initrd in the Hardy upgrade because I had yaird as my initrd builder (in edgy/feisty it worked fine, but in gutsy/hardy yaird fails). Unfortunately uninstalling yaird doesn't change /etc/kernel-img.conf back. So I had to manually change it to use update-initramfs. My /etc/kernel-img.conf is as follows:

do_symlinks = yes
relative_links = yes
do_bootloader = yes
do_bootfloppy = no
do_initrd = yes
link_in_boot = no
ramdisk = /usr/sbin/update-initramfs

Not sure where to go from here: comment/help would be welcome ...