About the subsystem

2023/03/04 Takashi Sakamoto

Overview

The overview of subsystem is illustrated in below figure.

++====================================================================++
|| User space                                                         ||
||  +---------+  +---------+  +---------+               +---------+   ||
||  | appl 1  |  | appl 2  |  | appl 3  |               | appl 4  |   ||
||  +----+----+  +----+----+  +----+----+               +----+----+   ||
||       |            |            |                         |        ||
++=======|============|============|=========================|========++
         |            |            | System call             |
++=======|============|============|=======++      ++========|========++
||       |            |            |       ||      ||        |        ||
||  +----+----+  +----+----+  +----+----+  ||      ||        |        ||
||  | fw0     |  | fw1     |  | fw2     |  ||      ||        |        ||
||  |  fw0.0  |  |  fw1.0  |  |  fw2.0  |  || bind || +------+------+ ||
||  |         |  |  fw1.1  |  |  fw2.1 ---------------+ unit driver | ||
||  |         |  |         |  |  fw2.2  |  ||      || +-------------+ ||
||  +----+----+  +----+----+  +----+----+  ||      ||                 ||
||       |            |            |       ||      || Other subsystem ||
||  +----+------------+------------+----+  ||      ++=================++
||  |           firewire-core           |  ||
||  +-----------------+-----------------+  ||
||                    |                    ||
||            +-------+-------+            ||
||            | firewire-ohci |            ||
||            +-------+-------+            ||
|| The subsystem      |                    ||
++====================|====================++
                      | PCI bus
    +-----------------+-----------------+
    |      1394 OHCI host controller    |
    |           +---------+             |
    |           | node A  |             |
    |           |         |             |
    |           | unit A1 |             |
    |           +---------+             |
    +------+---------------------+------+
           |                     | IEEE 1394 bus
      +----+----+           +----+----+
      | node B  |           | node C  |
      |         |           |         |
      | unit B1 |           | unit C1 |
      | unit B2 |           | unit C2 |
      |         |           | unit C3 |
      +---------+           +---------+

Two devices are connected to a 1394 OHCI host controller hardware, connected by PCI bus. In the topology of IEEE 1394 bus, the controller is identified as node A. The two devices are identified as node B and node C per each. They include some logical functions identified as unit.

In the subsystem, the host controller hardware is bound to firewire-ohci PCI driver. The driver communicates to firewire-core bus driver, which registers and maintains some instance of device for the node (e.g. fw0) and unit (e.g. fw0.0) in Linux system. It adds some character device so that user space application operates the host controller device to communicate with the node (e.g. fw1). Additionally, it binds the unit to the unit driver so that any instance in the other subsystem operates the host controller to communicate with the node which includes the unit (e.g. fw2.1).

The purpose of subsystem is to maintain firewire-core and firewire-ohci drivers, as well as the interface for the character devices and unit drivers so that user space application can utilize resources in IEEE 1394 bus.

Current Status

  • The latest stable releases of Linux IEEE 1394 drivers are those in the latest released Linux 4.x kernels or later.

  • The drivers in Linux 2.4 were considered stable too but have not been updated anymore for a long time.

    • Therefore they lack many features and compatibility updates which went into Linux 2.6.x…4.x releases.

IEEE Organization Unique Identifier (OUI) Assignments

OpenMoko project registered 0x001F11 to MAC Address Block Large (MA-L) maintained by Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE). MA-L is formerly known as OUI (Organizationally Unique Identifier). This subsystem uses the number for the value of vendor_id field in configuration ROM for self node.

OpenMoko project used the number to construct media access control address (MAC address). The rest 24 bit field has the value between 0x023900 and 0x0239ff. This subsystem uses 0x023901 for the value of model_id field in configuration ROM for self node.

Linux kernel v3.19 or before, 0xd00d1e was used for vendor_id and 000001 was for model_id. These values are not registered to IEEE.

Release notes

The following release notes only summarize more notable changes. A complete list of IEEE 1394 related changes is available via kernel.org git

Linux kernel version 4

Linux 4.9 (11 December 2016)

  • tentative release notes as per v4.9-rc4

  • firewire-net

    • Add missing input validation. Invalid IP-over-1394 encapsulation headers could trigger buffer overflows, potentially leading up to remote code execution (CVE-2016-8633). Also fixed in v4.8.7 and v4.4.31.

    • Fix IP-over-1394 link fragmentation headers that were read and written incorrectly, which prevented fragmented reception from/ fragmented transmission to other stacks, including Mac OS X, Windows XP, and older Linux’ eth1394. Also fixed in v4.8.7 and v4.4.31.

Linux 4.8 (2 October 2016)

  • snd-firewire-tascam

    • Fix possible deadlock in hwdep interface. Also fixed in v4.7.4 and v4.4.21.

  • snd-fireworks

    • Fix possible deadlock in hwdep interface. Also fixed in v4.7.4, v4.4.21, v4.1.34, v3.18.43.

Linux 4.7 (24 July 2016)

  • snd-dice

    • Add support for M-Audio Profire 610, and perhaps for Profire 2626.

  • snd-firewire-lib

    • Add tracepoints to dump a part of isochronous packet data in order to support debugging of device quirks and of kernel-internal packet processing. The patch changelog describes how to use this feature. A subsequent commit expands the dump format.

  • snd-firewire-lib, snd-bebob, snd-firewire-tascam, snd-fireworks

    • Remove matching of SYT fields of the outbound stream to those of the inbound stream since it proves to be unnecessary in practice. The same was already done in snd-dice in Linux v4.6. This simplifies the kernel code and allows for finer-grained tasklet scheduling.

  • snd-firewire-lib, snd-bebob, snd-firewire-digi00x, snd-firewire-tascam, snd-fireworks, snd-oxfw

    • Perform sound card registration at least 2 seconds after the last IEEE 1394 bus reset. This was already implemented for snd-dice in Linux v4.5 and is now adopted by the other FireWire audio drivers. It ensures that the bus and device firmware settle into a ready state before userspace initiate I/O to the device.

Linux 4.6 (15 May 2016)

  • snd-bebob

    • internal rework related to streaming recovery after bus reset

  • snd-dice

    • Change how the dependency between number of available PCM and MIDI channels versus sampling rate is handled. Also affects the hw_params ioctl interface. Userspace should set the desired sampling rate before starting PCM I/O.

    • Change how phase lock is ensured and how lock status is detected.

    • Remove matching of SYT fields of the outbound stream to those of the inbound stream. This synchronization happened when the device was configured for internal clock. It required a startup delay of the outbound stream, which caused DICE II based devices to remain silent at the first attempt to start streaming.

    • Add support for previously unavailable higher PCM channels on certain devices with high channel count, notably Focusrite Saffire PRO 40, Focusrite Liquid Saffire 56, and TC Electronic Studio Konnekt 48. These devices spread the PCM and MIDI channels across 2 tx + 2 rx IEEE 1394 channels instead of just 1 tx + 1 rx IEEE 1394 channel, as most other devices do.

  • snd-oxfw

    • improvements to MIDI I/O

Linux 4.5 (13 March 2016)

  • snd-dice

    • Improved handling of DICE II firmware bootstrapping during device start-up.

    • Avoid time-out when PCM streaming is started.

  • snd-firewire-tascam

    • Add support for TASCAM FW-1804.

  • snd-scs1x

    • The functionality of this driver was moved to the snd-oxfw driver, and the now obsolete snd-scs1x module has been removed.

Linux 4.4 (10 January 2016)

  • firewire-ohci

    • Work around JMicron JMB38x initialization quirk. Affected isochronous transmission, e.g. audio via FFADO or ALSA. Also fixed in v4.3.3, v4.2.8, v4.1.15, v3.18.26, v3.16.35, v3.14.59, v3.12.52, v3.10.95, v3.4.113, v3.2.74.

  • snd-bebob

    • Fix device identifier of Mackie Onyx 1220/1620/1640 FireWire I/O card.

  • snd-dice

    • Fix device identifier of Mackie Onyx Blackbird and Onyx-i series.

  • snd-firewire-digi00x

    • New driver for Digidesign audio interfaces: Digi 002 Console, Digi 002 Rack, Digi 003 Console, Digi 003 Rack, Digi 003 Rack+. Written by Takashi Sakamoto.

  • snd-firewire-lib

    • Restructured and extended for wider protocol support. Data block processing is split from isochronous packet processing. This work was required for integration of snd-firewire-digi00x and snd-firewire-tascam because devices which are supported by these drivers do not comply with IEC 61883-6. Written by Takashi Sakamoto.

  • snd-firewire-tascam

    • New driver for TASCAM audio interfaces: FW-1082, FW-1884. Written by Takashi Sakamoto.

  • snd-oxfw

    • Fix Mackie Onyx Satellite packet discontinuity when device is used in base station mode.

    • Add support for TASCAM FireOne.

    • Fix calculation of MIDI ports.

    • Fix for statically linked (i.e. non-modular) builds.

Linux 4.3 (1 November 2015)

  • No functional changes to the FireWire subsystem.

Linux 4.2 (30 August 2015)

  • snd-bebob

    • Add support for

      • Digidesign Mbox 2 Pro

      • Behringer FCA610, FCA1616

    • Improve BeBoB v3 support (PrismSound Orpheus, Behringer UFX1604, Behringer FCA610).

    • Improved clock source detection. Add SYT-Match support.

  • snd-firewire-lib

    • Internal changes related to packet handling.

  • snd-fireworks

    • Fix packet discontinuity with newer firmwares. Also fixed in v4.1.6 and v3.18.21.

Linux 4.1 (21 June 2015)

  • No functional changes to the FireWire subsystem.

Linux 4.0 (12 April 2015)

  • firewire-core

    • The vendor ID and model ID in the Configuration ROM root directory of Linux hosts was changed from 0xd00d1e:0x000001 to 0x001f11:0x023901. This change makes firewire-core ‘s local Configuration ROM comply with IEEE’s OUI assignment rules.

    • This has been made possible by Openmoko’s granting a range of IDs to the Linux IEEE 1394 subsystem. See IEEE OUI Assignments for additional information. This change cannot have negative impact on any standard protocols, but developers of private protocols may need to adapt if they relied on these root directory entries instead of their own unit directory entries.

    • The change was also backmerged into v3.12.51.

  • snd-bebob

    • Fix initialization of some M-Audio devices with Linux on big-endian CPUs. Also fixed in v3.19.5 and v3.18.13.

  • snd-firewire-lib, snd-bebob, snd-dice, snd-fireworks

    • Fix device reference counting and shutdown. Also fixed in v3.19.2.

Linux kernel version 3

Linux 3.19 (8 February 2015)

  • firewire-ohci, firewire-sbp2

    • small internal changes without functional change

  • snd-dice

    • Large rework by Takashi Sakamoto in order to support PCM capture and MIDI I/O. (Before, only PCM playback was implemented.) This adds support for a wide range of DICE based audio devices.

  • snd-firewire-lib

    • Limit MIDI transmission rate as per specification to prevent loss of messages.

  • snd-oxfw

    • Driver was renamed from snd-firewire-speakers to snd-oxfw in order to reflect upcoming support for more audio devices based on OXFW970/971 based devices.

    • Large rework by Takashi Sakamoto in order to support PCM capture and MIDI I/O. (Before, only PCM playback was implemented.)

    • Additional device support implemented by Takashi Sakamoto:

      • Behringer F-Control Audio 202

      • Mackie(Loud) Onyx-i series (former models)

      • Mackie(Loud) Onyx Satellite

      • Mackie(Loud) Tapco Link.Firewire

      • Mackie(Loud) d.2 pro/d.4 pro

      • Mackie(Loud) U.420/U.420d

Linux 3.18 (7 December 2014)

  • firedtv

    • Fix potential overflow of operands for Conditional Access.

  • firewire-core

    • Prevent kernel stack leaking into ioctl arguments. Also fixed in v3.17.4, v3.14.25, v3.12.34, v3.10.61, v3.4.106, v3.2.65.

  • snd-bebob

    • Fix Terratec Phase 88 clock source detection. Also fixed in v3.17.2 and v3.16.7.

    • Fix Terratec Phase 88 Rack FW clock source detection.

    • Fix Saffire Pro clock source detection. Also fixed in v3.17.3.

Linux 3.17 (5 October 2014)

  • snd-dice

    • Fix regression at 176.4 and 192.0 kHz sample rate. Also fixed in v3.16.4.

Linux 3.16 (3 August 2014)

  • Two new drivers were added:

    • snd-fireworks

      • New ALSA driver, implemented by Takashi Sakamoto, for FireWire audio devices which are based on the Echo Digital Audio Fireworks platform. The following devices are supported:

        • Echo AudioFire 12/ 8 (until 2009 July)

        • Echo AudioFire 2/ 4/ Pre8/ 8 (since 2009 July)

        • Echo Fireworks 8/ HDMI

        • Gibson Robot Interface Pack/ GoldTop

        • Mackie Onyx 400F/ 1200F

    • snd-bebob

      • New ALSA driver, implemented by Takashi Sakamoto, for FireWire audio devices based on BridgeCo DM1000/DM1100/DM1500 chipsets with BeBoB firmware, in particular:

        • Acoustic Reality eAR Master One

        • Apogee X-FireWire card for DA/AD/DD-16X and Rosetta 200/400

        • Apogee Ensemble

        • Behringer Digital Mixer X32 series (X-UF card)

        • Behringer XENIX UFX 1204/ 1604

        • BridgeCo RDAudio1/ Audio5

        • CME Matrix K

        • Edirol FA-66/ FA-101

        • ESI Quatafire 610

        • Focusrite Saffire, Saffire LE, Saffire PRO 10 I/O, Saffire PRO 26 I/O (the older silver model; newer Saffire PRO models use a different chipset)

        • iCON FireXon

        • Lynx Aurora 8/ 16 with LT-FW

        • Mackie d.2 with FireWire option

        • Mackie Onyx 1220/ 1620/ 1640 with FireWire I/O card

        • M-Audio FireWire 1814, ProjectMix I/O

        • M-Audio FireWire 410/ AudioPhile/ Solo

        • M-Audio Ozonic, NRV10, ProFire LightBridge

        • Phonic Helix Board 12/18/24 FireWire MKII

        • Phonic Helix Board 12/18/24 Universal

        • PreSonus FireBox, FP10 (FirePod), Inspire 1394

        • Prism Sound Orpheus, ADA-8XR

        • Stanton FinalScratch 2 (ScratchAmp)

        • Tascam IF-FW/DM

        • TerraTec Aureon 7.1 FireWire

        • TerraTec EWS MIC2, EWS MIC8

        • TerraTec Phase 24 FW, Phase X24p FW, Phase 88 RackFW

        • Yamaha GO44, GO46

    • snd-firewire-lib

      • several extensions implemented by Takashi Sakamoto in order to support the two new drivers

  • Many of the mentioned audio devices are also supported by the FFADO userspace drivers (and have been for some time). The new ALSA kernel drivers are an alternative to (or replacement of) the sound streaming portion of FFADO, i.e. the part which implements PCM and MIDI I/O. Extra userspace software like ffado-mixer remains required for control of device features like router, mixer, clock source, port modes, and so on.

  • Takashi Sakamoto published an extensive report on the new drivers.

Linux 3.15 (8 June 2014)

  • In v3.14, a feature was added to enable remote DMA from and to memory outside the 32 bit range of physical addresses, which is possible at least with LSI FW643 controllers. This feature clashed with at least one vendor-specific device control protocol and was therefore reverted in v3.15 and v3.14.7.

Linux 3.14 (30 March 2014)

  • firewire-net

    • Fix a use-after-free bug which could occur after transmission failures.

  • firewire-ohci

    • The new module parameter remote_dma (default = N, enable unfiltered remote DMA = Y) replaces the former build-time option CONFIG_FIREWIRE_OHCI_REMOTE_DMA. (This kernel configuration option was located in the Kernel hacking menu, item Remote debugging over FireWire with ``firewire-ohci.) It is therefore now possible to switch on RDMA at runtime on all kernels with firewire-ohci loaded or built-in, for example for remote debugging, without the need for a custom build option.

  • Fix initialization failure with Agere FW323 and some other Agere/LSI controllers. These failures were a regression since Linux v3.10 inclusive. Also fixed in v3.13.7, v3.12.15, v3.11.10.7, v3.10.41.

Linux 3.13 (19 January 2014)

  • snd-dice

    • New ALSA driver, written by Clemens Ladisch. This is a playback-only driver for IEEE 1394 audio interfaces which are based on the DICE chip family (DICE-II/Jr/Mini) from TC Applied Technologies.

    • For the time being, this driver is being bound only to devices which do not expose recording channels. Drivers which support playback + capture + MIDI are available from the FFADO project in the form of JACK backends, implemented in userspace.

    • There are people working on extending the snd-dice ALSA driver to support capture and MIDI too, and to bring similar ALSA support to other FireWire audio devices. When this is done, ALSA would replace FFADO’s streaming related components. Device control however, i.e. mixer and router controls etc., will continue to be implemented in userspace (typically by ffado-mixer of the FFADO project).

Linux 3.12 (3 November 2013)

  • firewire-core and firewire-ohci

    • Fix a subsystem deadlock at bus reset which was sometimes observed if CPU resources were low. (This fixes a regression since Linux 3.2 inclusive. The subsystem workqueue deadlocked between transaction completion handling and bus reset handling if the kernel’s worker thread pool could not be increased in time.)

Linux 3.11 (2 September 2013)

  • userspace API

    • Fix corrupted video capture, seen with IIDC/DCAM applications and certain buffer settings. (Fixes a regression since v3.4 inclusive. The fix has also been released in kernels v3.10.5, v3.8.13.7, v3.5.7.19, v3.4.56.)

  • kernelspace API

    • The kernel-internal programming interface between firewire-core and protocol drivers was slightly changed to better support drivers which need to apply device-specific parameters or routines. Out-of-tree developers who maintain a stable history can git pull git://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/ieee1394/linux1394.git fw_driver-api-transition to receive commit 94a87157cde9 from which a seamless transition to the current programming interface is possible.

Linux 3.10 (30 June 2013)

  • firewire-net

    • added support for IPv6-over-1394 compliant with RFC 3146, implemented by YOSHIFUJI Hideaki

    • release IR DMA context at ifdown

    • fix small memory leak at shutdown

  • firewire-ohci

    • fix video reception on VIA VT6306 with gstreamer, MythTV, and maybe dv4l

    • fix a startup issue with Agere/LSI FW643-e2

    • fix controller removal when controller is in suspended state

    • improved error logging

Linux 3.9 (28 April 2013)

  • The firewire subsystem underwent only minor janitorial changes in this kernel.

Linux 3.8 (18 February 2013)

  • firewire-net

    • fix reception of fragmented multicast and broadcast datagrams

  • firewire-sbp2

    • pass through thin provisioning related opcodes to SPC-3 devices

  • snd-scs1x

    • New ALSA MIDI driver for Stanton SCS.1d and SCS.1m FireWire DJ controllers, written by Clemens Ladisch. (While MIDI is handled by the snd-scs1x driver, audio I/O with SCS.1m is handled by FFADO userspace drivers.)

Linux 3.7 (10 December 2012)

  • firewire-core

    • cdev ioctl ABI: On 64-bit architectures, the kernel wrote 4 bytes too many to non-zero fw_cdev_get_info.bus_reset. This could corrupt user memory in case of x86-32 userland on x86-64 kernel. This was fixed also in kernel 3.6.3, 3.5.7.1, 3.4.15, 3.2.32, 3.0.47.

    • seed the random number generator with GUIDs of FireWire nodes

    • internal optimization concerning address handlers

  • firewire-ohci

    • more complete TI TSB41BA3D support: properly read the local selfID0.i bit

  • sbp-target

    • minor fixes

Linux 3.6 (30 September 2012)

  • firewire-core, firewire-ohci

    • various small fixes and optimizations

  • sysfs ABI

    • new attribute /sys/bus/firewire/devices/fw[0-9]+/is_local to tell local and remote nodes apart

Linux 3.5 (21 July 2012)

  • firewire-core

    • Fix mismatch between DMA mapping direction and DMA synchronization direction of isochronous reception buffers of userspace drivers if vma-mapped for R/W access. Depending on IOMMU properties of the hardware, this bug could have caused e.g. failures to capture video through libdc1394.

    • more consistent retry stategy in device discovery/ rediscovery, and improved failure diagnostics

  • sbp-target

    • New driver: Adds SCSI target functionality over FireWire. This enables a Linux node to act as SBP-2/ SCSI device to other nodes on the FireWire bus, for example as hard disk — similar to FireWire Target Disk mode of the firmware of many Apple computers. Any SCSI command set supported by the Linux target core, multiple logical units on the target node, and concurrent login by initiators are supported by sbp-target.

    • In the kernel configuration menu, the sbp-target option resides under Device Drivers/ Generic Target Core Mod (TCM) and ConfigFS Infrastructure/ FireWire SBP-2 fabric module.

Linux 3.4 (20 May 2012)

  • <linux/firewire-cdev.h> API

    • Added FW_CDEV_IOC_FLUSH_ISO ioctl which lets an application get any currently completed isochronous packets reported. A corresponding libraw1394 update to use this ioctl in raw1394_iso_recv_flush() has been released in libraw1394 2.0.9.

  • firewire-core, firewire-net, firewire-ohci, firewire-sbp2

    • All messages to the kernel log are now consistently prefixed by driver name and device name or number.

  • firewire-ohci

    • Fix premature completion of multichannel isochronous reception DMA. Also fixed in kernel 3.3.1, 3.2.14, 3.0.27.

    • Fix missing completion notification in isochronous I/O in case of big intervals between interrupt packets or with big packet headers. — Alas this introduced a regression for libdc1394 and FlyCap2, causing corrupted video, bogus framerates etc. with certain buffer settings or frame sizes. This regression has been fixed in kernels 3.11, 3.10.5, 3.8.13.7, 3.5.7.19, 3.4.56.

  • firewire-sbp2

    • If the target’s unit directory contains a Unit_Unique_ID entry, use it instead of the node unique ID as the target’s GUID in the ieee1394_id sysfs attribute and consequently in udev’s /dev/disk/by-id symbolic links.

    • Do not try to log into targets on the local node. I/O to such targets is not yet implemented, and local targets are probably meant to be accessed by remote initiators anyway.

    • Fix handling of SCSI sense data (deferred errors, Valid, Filemark, EOM, ILI).

Linux 3.3 (18 March 2012)

  • firewire-ohci

    • Add workaround for the 1394 part of Creative SoundBlaster Audigy in order to fix transaction failures. Also fixed in kernel 3.2.6 and 3.0.21.

    • Work around random malfunctions of Ricoh PCI Express 1394 controllers by disabling MSI (message signaled interrupts). Also fixed in kernel 3.2.6 and 3.0.21.

  • Loosely related to FireWire (but also USB, SATA, and other interconnects): Some kernel crashes at hot unplug of storage devices were fixed; e.g. an infamous bug with card readers has been addressed.

Linux 3.2 (4 January 2012)

  • firewire-net

    • Increase throughput by use of unified transactions for incoming datagrams.

  • firewire-ohci

    • Add support for TI TSB41BA3D as local PHY. This PHY is found on special 1394b-400 cards.

    • Fix bus topology recognition in presence of a cycle master node with a wrong gap count. The issue was observed when switching off a bus-powered DesktopKonnekt6 audio device.

    • Properly synchronize isochronous I/O buffers on non-coherent architectures. Architectures with cache-coherent DMA like x86 or PPC were not affected.

Linux 3.1 (24 October 2011)

  • Documentation

  • <linux/firewire-cdev.h> API

    • Unknown ioctls set errno to ENOTTY now instead of EINVAL. FW_CDEV_EVENT_BUS_RESET events are now guaranteed not to be generated before FW_CDEV_IOC_GET_INFO was used to set the bus reset closure. Both issues are also fixed in Linux 3.0.1 and 2.6.35.14.

    • The first FW_CDEV_IOC_GET_INFO ioctl is clarified to start reception of bus reset events; earlier bus reset events are discarded. This ensures events with well-defined closure value under all circumstances. Also fixed in kernel 3.0.1 and 2.6.35.14.

    • Fixed an issue with 32 bit userland drivers on top of 64 bit kernel, resulting in FW_CDEV_IOC_GET_INFO failing with EFAULT. Also fixed in kernel 3.0.25. libraw1394 and libdc1394 were not affected by this issue.

  • firewire-core

    • Fix detection failures of old Panasonic and Grundig camcorders. The failure was accompanied by giving up on config rom log messages after ack-busy events in firewire-ohci ‘s debug log. Also fixed in kernel 3.0.25. (The fix addresses transaction failures to these camcorders which had more severe effect on the current driver stack than on the linux1394 drivers of kernel 2.6.36 and older. While basic DV capture without AV/C control works with these camcorders now, full operation also requires libraw1394 changes which were released in libraw1394 2.0.8.)

  • firewire-ohci

    • Continuing the optimization work that was released in kernel 3.0, CPU utilization during packet queueing was reduced further, benefiting all higherlevel 1394 kernel drivers and userland drivers.

    • Fix I/O and PM suspend with O2Micro PCIe FireWire controllers by blacklisting MSI on them. Also fixed in kernel 3.0.5.

    • A fix in the core kernel’s memory management addresses firewire-ohci startup failures with kernels that were configured for a maximum number of CPUs of something else than a power of two. This was a regression since kernel 2.6.38. Also fixed in kernel 3.0.3.

  • firewire-sbp2

    • Fix panic when the module was unloaded while a management transaction was still pending, e.g. login. This was a regression since kernel 3.0. Also fixed in kernel 3.0.8.

Linux 3.0 (21 July 2011)

  • This release contains a few fixes and some optimizations regarding CPU utilization of the IEEE 1394 kernel drivers, and the following more visible changes.

  • firewire-ohci

    • Probing of the FireWire part on Pinnacle MovieBoard is disabled for now because it used to lock up the kernel. Also disabled in kernel 2.6.39.4, 2.6.35.14. Perhaps we can come up with a proper fix longer term, perhaps not.

  • firewire-sbp2

    • Management of storage devices (connect, reconnect, disconnect) is now performed in parallel if there are two or more devices present.

  • snd-isight

    • New ALSA driver for the microphones in Apple iSight FireWire webcams. It exposes front and rear microphone as a sound card with two PCM capture channels. This supersedes an older out-of-the-mainline driver with the same function, called lisight, which depended on the removed ieee1394 driver stack.

Linux kernel version 2.6.3x

Linux 2.6.39 (18 May 2011)

  • firewire-core

    • Increase the default timeout of outbound split transactions from 100 ms to 2000 ms. This is mostly just relevant to some audio devices for which the FFADO drivers used to increase this timeout.

    • Try to probe even nodes whose self-ID packet does not have the “link active” bit set. Some rare devices wrongly have this bit off and were therefore not recognized.

    • Fix the FW_CDEV_IOC_ADD/REMOVE_DESCRIPTOR ioctl()s which did not update the local Config ROM properly since kernel 2.6.36 if called in repetition. Also fixed in Linux 2.6.38.6.

  • snd-firewire-speakers

    • New ALSA driver for LaCie FireWire Speakers. Also has got some experimental support for Griffin FireWave.

Linux 2.6.38 (14 March 2011)

  • firewire-core

    • Fix access to some Canon camcorders, notably MV5i. Also fixed in kernel 2.6.37.1, 2.6.36.4, and 2.6.33.8.

  • firewire-net

    • Longstanding performance issues are now fixed thanks to changes in firewire-ohci.

    • Show carrier status to userland.

    • Refresh the ARP cache quicker after a temporary disconnection.

  • firewire-ohci

    • Fix reception of asynchronous packets larger than 4080 bytes.

    • Performance of asynchronous reception has been improved considerably. Busy link situations that were previously very common with firewire-net and with applications that required fast async reception are now avoided.

    • Fix restoration of the GUID after PM resume with some BIOSes.

    • Restart isochronous DMAs after PM resume if they were running at PM suspend time. Also needed for broadcast reception by firewire-net.

  • firedtv

    • Fix reporting of IR remote control key presses to recent Xorg versions.

  • As always, there have also been several further low-profile improvements, e.g. a few small changes to firewire-core and firewire-ohci which each lower CPU utilization a little bit or prevent potential corner case bugs.

  • Known issues: On systems with the kernel configured for a maximum supported number of CPU cores which is not a power of two, firewire-ohci of kernel 2.6.38 and newer triggers a bug in the kernel’s memory management system, causing a crash during boot bug [31572]. As a workaround, set CONFIG_NR_CPUS to 4 instead 3, 8 instead of 6, or 16 instead of 10 etc., depending on your needs. This bug has been fixed (i.e. the workaround is no longer needed) in Linux 3.1 and 3.0.3.

Linux 2.6.37 (4 January 2011)

  • firewire-net

    • Fix memory leaks.

    • Fix counting of transmit statistics.

    • Fix firewire-net blocking other FireWire I/O.

  • firewire-ohci

    • Fix crashes or memory corruption during reception of large asynchronous requests or responses. These bugs were for example experienced when using firewire-net. Also fixed in 2.6.36.2, 2.6.35.10, 2.6.34.9, 2.6.33.8, and 2.6.32.27.

  • firedtv

    • Add support for DVB-S2 HD channels. (HD already worked on DVB-C and presumably DVB-T.)

    • Add a module parameter to adjust CA system IDs. This is a workaround for users of Content Access Module and applications like MythTV, in cases when manufacturer ID of a CAM and CA system ID differ.

  • dv1394, eth1394, ieee1394, ohci1394, pcilynx, raw1394, sbp2, video1394

    • These drivers, a.k.a. the Linux1394 driver stack, have been removed.

      • firewire-ohci replaces ohci1394.

      • firewire-core replaces ieee1394, raw1394, video1394.

      • firewire-net replaces eth1394.

      • firewire-sbp2 replaces sbp2.

      • There is no replacement for dv1394 and pcilynx.

      • The drivers firedtv, init_ohci1394_dma, and nosy are not affected by these replacements.

  • Known issues: The rare and quirky controllers ALi M52xx, Apple UniNorth v1, NVIDIA NForce2 are even less well supported by firewire-ohci than by ohci1394. There were some ieee1394 based out-of-the-mainline drivers. Of them, only lisight, an audio driver for iSight webcams, seems still useful. Work is underway to reimplement it on top of firewire-core.

Linux 2.6.36 (20 October 2010)

  • This release brings several fixes and some new features for the newer firewire driver stack. Some of these fixes, as far as they affect libraw1394 based software, also require libraw1394 2.0.6 (which contains corresponding updates) or later. Furthermore, an older special-purpose stand-alone driver has now been merged into the mainline kernel: Nosy, a packet sniffer for PCILynx cards.

  • firewire-core, interface to userspace drivers

    • Fix transaction responses if multiple cards are present.

    • Fix lock transaction responses.

    • Add new incoming request event type which carries information about source node and extended transaction code. This addresses deficiencies of the prior ABI for address range mapping and FCP which made it impossible to write target-like drivers in userspace. It also prevented FFADO to work with two or more audio devices together on the bus. In order to use this ABI fix with libraw1394 based clients like e.g. FFADO, libraw1394 v2.0.6 will be required. (Due to be released soon.)

    • FW_CDEV_VERSION, defined in <linux/firewire-cdev.h>, is no longer being updated. Old libraw1394 code misused this constant. If your code needs to handle different firewire-cdev.h file versions, have a look at current libraw1394 code how it can be done. Basically, check for particular defined ioctls and event types.

    • Fix fw_cdev_event_bus_reset: Implement bm_node_id. Fix missing event on the local node’s /dev/fw* after descriptor addition or removal.

    • New feature: Support multichannel isochronous reception. A corresponding update to libraw1394 has not been implemented yet.

    • New feature: PHY packet transmission and reception. Among else this allows to implement VersaPHY controllers or VersaPHY devices in userspace.

    • The address range allocation ioctl now allows to allocate a CSR anywhere in a region larger than the CSR.

    • Add more safeguards against bogus ioctl data and against multithread client race conditions.

    • Several updates to the inline documentation in <linux/firewire-cdev.h>.

  • firewire-core, bus management

    • Support the following CSRs on the local node: STATE_CLEAR/STATE_SET (cmstr and abdicate bits), NODE_IDS, RESET_START (as dummy), SPLIT_TIMEOUT (useful to FFADO with BeBoB devices with lots of channels), CYCLE_TIME write support, BUS_TIME, BUSY_TIMEOUT, PRIORITY_BUDGET, MAINT_UTILITY.

    • More careful bus manager routines WRT temporary transaction failures, Cycle Master activation.

    • Bus resets that were issued by userspace clients via bus reset ioctl or indirectly by descriptor addition or removal (also firewire-net insertion and removal) are now better integrated into bus management: The gap count is kept stable, and the period between such bus resets is forced to be 2 seconds or more. This period is necessary for isochronous resource reallocation, SBP-2 reconnect, and similar procedures.

  • firewire-ohci

    • Enable message-signaled interrupts (MSI) on native PCIe controllers. This includes Agere FW643E (i.e. FW643 rev07), but not FW643 rev06 and older nor VIA VT6315 nor JMicron JMB38x on which we continue to use classic pin-based interrupts due to hardware bugs. MSIs are furthermore not present on Texas Instruments PCIe FireWire controllers which are PCI devices with a PCI–PCIe bridge. — MSI support was initially also enabled on older FW643 and VT6317 which led to regressions in kernels 2.6.36…2.6.36.2 inclusive. This has been corrected in kernel 2.6.36.3.

    • Enable workaround for nonmonotonic Cycle Timer on Ricoh controllers. Cycle Timer is used by libdc1394 and by FFADO for reception timestamps.

  • firewire-sbp2

    • Fix stalls with “Unsolicited response” with some firmwares of 4-bay RAID enclosures.

    • Fix a memory leak in error cases.

  • nosy

    • “New” driver: Nosy is a traffic sniffer driver for Texas Instruments PCILynx/ PCILynx-2 based cards. The use cases for nosy are analysis of nonstandard protocols and as an aid in development of drivers, applications, or firmwares.

    • Nosy was written by Kristian Høgsberg many years ago and maintained by him in a stand-alone source repository. Now the driver is available in the mainline kernel sources. Its userspace frontend, called nosy-dump, is also maintained and distributed with the kernel sources under tools/firewire/.

    • PCILynx/ PCILynx-2 is a FireWire controller which is not OHCI-1394 compliant. This controller is found for example on IOI IOI-1394TT (PCI card), Unibrain Fireboard 400 PCI Lynx-2 (PCI card), Newer Technology FireWire 2 Go (CardBus card), and Apple Power Mac G3 blue & white (onboard controller).

  • There is also an obscure change to the kernel’s Makefiles with a side effect: When both ohci1394 and firewire-ohci were installed but there was no modprobe blacklist configuration for one or both of them, then it was reportedly more likely in recent kernels that ohci1394 was being bound to FireWire controllers. In 2.6.36, it will more likely be firewire-ohci.

Linux 2.6.35 (1 August 2010)

  • This release brings minor fixes to the new firewire driver stack.

  • The old ieee1394 driver stack — i.e. ieee1394, ohci1394, pcilynx, sbp2, eth1394, raw1394, video1394, dv1394 — is now scheduled for removal in Linux 2.6.37.

  • firewire-core

    • Fix inaccessibility of certain Sony camcorders, caused by bus reset loops because of conflicts between firewire-core ‘s and the camcorder firmware’s bus management. Fixed by checking for IEEE 1394a compliance of the isochronous resource manager. Also fixed in Linux 2.6.34.1, 2.6.33.6, 2.6.32.16.

    • more robust allocation of transaction labels and time-out of transactions

    • lseek() is not useful with /dev/fw*; it is now failed instead of seemingly succeeding

  • firewire-ohci

    • access PHY registers more safely

    • enable IEEE 1394a enhancements in the physical layer and link layer consistently (or disable consistently on IEEE 1394-1995 hardware)

  • raw1394, video1394, dv1394

    • lseek() is not useful with /dev/raw1394, /dev/video1394/*, /dev/dv1394/*; it is now failed instead of seemingly succeeding

  • Known issues: firewire-ohci changes in this release caused slow-down and data corruption on some TI TSB82AA2 based cards. This regression is fixed in kernel 2.6.36 and 2.6.35.8.

Linux 2.6.34 (16 May 2010)

  • firewire-core

    • fix “giving up on config rom for node id…” with some devices with bogus configuration ROM, notably Panasonic AG-DV2500 tape deck

    • fix Model_ID in modalias (sysfs variable and uevent)

    • more consistency checks in userspace driver interface

    • add FW_CDEV_IOC_GET_CYCLE_TIMER2 ioctl for choice of local clock

    • put <linux/firewire-*.h> files under MIT license

    • remove incomplete support of Bus_Time CSR

  • firewire-ohci

    • Work around hardware that does not provide reliable cycle timer register access. Currently, this work around is active for the following known affected chips: ALi, NEC, VIA, TI TSB12LV22. A tool called test_cycle_time exists which can be used to detect faulty chips that require addition to firewire-ohci ‘s internal quirks list. Reliable cycle timer access is needed for video reception timestamps and audio synchronization.

    • add module parameter that allows ad hoc activation of quirk fixes

    • fix detection of maximum available IR and IT DMA contexts

    • fixes for local (loopback) requests

  • firedtv

    • DMA mapping fixes

  • ohci1394_earlyinit

    • fix boot crash regression

Linux 2.6.33 (24 February 2010)

  • This release finally adapts the firedtv DVB driver to be usable with the new stack alternatively to the old stack. It furthermore brings a few fixes for the new stack along with the usual assortment of less visible updates.

  • Distributors who still ship the old stack (ieee1394, ohci1394, raw1394, sbp2, eth1394 and more) should now switch to the new one (firewire-core, firewire-ohci, firewire-sbp2, firewire-net). In the first iteration, those distributors might want to ship the old stack also (but blacklisted) as a fallback for their users if unforeseen problems with the newer replacement drivers are encountered.

  • The older FireWire stack contains several known problems which are not going to be fixed; instead, those issues are addressed by the new stack. An incomplete list of these issues is kept in bugzilla. We have a guide on migration from the older to the newer stack.

  • firewire-core

    • Properly support multiple concurrent FCP listeners. This is necessary if more than one process or driver requires continuous control over AV/C devices (e.g. camcorders, tape decks, audio devices, TV tuners).

    • Some small optimizations and fixes, among them improved Topology Map register handling.

    • Proper size check in the add_descriptor ioctl. Also fixed in Linux 2.6.32.8.

  • firewire-net

    • Fix a crash on SMP systems.

  • firewire-ohci

    • Always use packet-per-buffer mode for isochronous reception, not dual-buffer mode. Reasons to do so are different behavior of the modes under some circumstances, and hardware bugs in dual-buffer mode.

    • Fix possible crash with unusual isochronous reception parameters (CVE-2009-4138). Also fixed in Linux 2.6.32.2, 2.6.31.9, 2.6.27.42.

    • Fix crashes or image corruption during video reception with TSB43AB23 on 64 bit systems with more than 2 GB RAM. Also fixed in Linux 2.6.32.8.

    • Fix potential breakup of isochronous transmission on some controllers, e.g. probably O2Micro controllers.

  • firedtv

    • Port to new firewire stack. Depending on whether the kernel is being configured for ieee1394 (classic stack) or firewire (new stack) or both, the firedtv driver will automatically use the proper stack. This means that FireDTV users are no longer forced to use the old stack.

Linux 2.6.32 (2 December 2009)

  • This release fixes the new FireWire drivers for operation with FFADO (FireWire audio driver framework) and brings some other, minor updates. There are also fixes in libraw1394 required in order to run FFADO on top of the new drivers; these fixes have been released in libraw1394 v2.0.5.

  • firewire-core, firewire-ohci, raw1394

    • Fix a few obscure bugs which were unlikely to show up in practice.

  • firewire-ohci

    • Fix start-on-cycle feature of isochronous transmissions and receptions. Especially needed for FFADO.

    • Expose isochronous transmit cycle timestamps to firewire-core and thus to userspace drivers. Especially needed for FFADO.

  • firewire-sbp2

    • Fix potential bugs: login timeout, invalid SCSI status

  • firedtv

    • Fix automatic retuning of DVB-C cards after temporary loss of antenna signal.

    • Fix I/O to Conditional Access Module.

    • Improve module parameter for runtime debugging.

Linux 2.6.31 (9 September 2009)

  • This release brings improved support of fine-grained access permission policies for FireWire application programs in userspace, IP networking with the new FireWire driver stack, and support for FireWire disks larger than 2 TB (this is also available in some stable kernel sub-releases before 2.6.31, see below).

  • firewire-core, firewire-ohci, firewire-sbp2

    • No longer marked as “experimental” in the kernel configuration menu. Distributors who provided the older ieee1394 driver stack so far are encouraged to build and install both driver stacks. Note, the new stack does not yet support studio audio devices, nor FireDTV DVB interfaces. (Support is currently in development.) See Juju Migration for further guidance on switching to the new drivers.

    • Driver source files and header files have been reorganized. This only affects kernel driver developers.

  • firewire-core

    • Added the sysfs attribute “units” to node representations. Its path is /sys/bus/firewire/devices/fw[0-9]+/units and it contains tuples of specifier-ID:software-version of all units found on a node.

    • This is used in new udev rules, released in udev v144, which selectively grant non-root users access to FireWire character device files of AV/C devices (camcorders, set top boxes, audio devices and more) and IIDC cameras (alias DCAM, industrial cameras and webcams) while other device types remain inaccessible to unprivileged users by default.

    • Be even more careful with Broadcast_Channel CSR accesses to avoid clashes with buggy firmwares.

    • Fixed rarely occurring bugs related to shutdown of isochronous DMA contexts and to DMA-mapping on platforms with non-cachecoherent DMA. (The latter fix introduced a regression into 2.6.31-rc1, fixed since 2.6.31-rc9.)

  • firewire-net

    • Added as new driver for IPv4 over 1394 for the new firewire stack, replacement of et1394 in the old stack. Both eth1394 and firewire-net are still considered experimental due to some remaining, though different, bugs in them.

  • firewire-ohci

    • Fix video reception on Ricoh R5C832.

    • Fix video reception from more than one camera simultaneously on Agere FW643.

  • firewire-sbp2

    • Added support for disks bigger than 2 TB. The necessary fix in our two SBP-2 initiator drivers has also been released in kernel 2.6.30.5 and 2.6.27.30.

      • Note, volume sizes bigger than 2 TB also require specific support in the SBP-2 target chipset of FireWire disk or RAID enclosures. This is true for any operating system as initiator, not just Linux. Check with your enclosure vendor if in doubt.

    • Fix potential crash after “status write for unknown orb” events.

  • sbp2

    • Added support for disks bigger than 2 TB. See remarks at firewire-sbp2.

Linux 2.6.30 (9 June 2009)

  • Most of the changes relate to extensions to the <linux/firewire-cdev.h> API which are required for advanced usage by FireWire-enabled userspace applications, especially IIDC video capture. * With these updates, the newer firewire drivers are now superior to the older ieee1394 drivers in the fields of industrial video acquisition/ machine vision/ microscopy etc. — just like the new drivers have already been superior and preferred for mass storage (SBP-2) in the last two or three kernel releases.

  • (Regarding consumer video applications, the new drivers should now be functionally on par with — yet more secure than — the old drivers. Alas the new drivers cannot be used with studio audio equipment yet. IP networking with the new drivers has become available in kernel 2.6.31.)

  • firewire-core

    • Optionally expose the reception timestamp of each isochronous packet, not just of interrupt packets. This change is accompanied by an update of the constant FW_CDEV_VERSION from 1 to 2.

    • Add ioctls for isochronous resource management (allocation and deallocation of isochronous channels and bandwidth). These do not only accomplish what the corresponding libraw1394 functions can do, they also implement optional kernel-assisted reallocation and deallocation. This means that client programs do not need to implement reallocation in their bus reset handler anymore and often can get rid of bus reset handlers entirely. Also, isochronous resources can be released by the kernel if the client program crashes or shuts down improperly. The kernel-assisted variant of resource allocation also takes care of the grace period which is to be observed after bus resets.

    • Add ioctl to query the maximum transmission speed to/from a given node.

    • Add ioctl for broadcast write requests. This is for example useful to control multiple similar cameras at once. For device security reasons, broadcast write requests are restricted to addresses in Units Space.

    • Add ioctl for asynchronous stream transmission. Asynchronous streams are addressed to channels instead of nodes (like isochronous streams are tied to channels) but transmitted after asynchronous bus arbitrations (like asynchronous write requests, unlike isochronous streams).

    • Add various consistency checks to enforce proper cdev API usage.

    • Disallow the FW_CDEV_IOC_ADD_DESCRIPTOR ioctl on any other /dev/fw* than those of local nodes. This is because userland will typically maintain an access policy based on unit directories that are present on each node, and this ioctl may therefore influence accessibility of local nodes’ device files.

    • Implement Broadcast_Channel register support for conformance with the 1394a bus management specification.

  • firedtv

    • Implement tuning of DVB-S2 boxes. Also implemented in kernel 2.6.29.1. This fixes tuning of standard definition channels. Reception of high definition channels is not yet implemented.

Linux kernel version 2.6.2x

Linux 2.6.29 (23 March 2009)

  • dv1394

    • Fix potential problem with interrupt control on big endian CPUs.

    • Remove unnecessary messages in the kernel log if the driver is loaded but unused.

  • ieee1394

    • Support 1600 Mb/s and 3200 Mb/s capable hardware. Previously there was a limit to 800 Mb/s. (firewire-core had no such limit.)

  • ohci1394

    • Work around “irq…: nobody cared” and interrupt storm during resume after system suspend.

    • Increase number of hardware-assisted transmission retries when responder nodes are busy. Fixes AV/C control failures of camcorders with dvgrab (“send oops”) and kino (loss of AV/C control), and possibly with other devices and software as well. Also fixed in 2.6.28.5 and 2.6.27.16.

  • sbp2

    • Synchronize device quirk detection and handling with the code in the sibling driver firewire-sbp2.

    • Add workarounds for 2nd and 3rd generation iPods. 2nd generation was found to need a request size limitation, 3rd generation reported a wrong capacity. This resulted in unrecoverable IO errors right after an affected iPod was plugged in. Also fixed in 2.6.28.5 and 2.6.27.16.

  • firedtv

    • New driver for FireWire-attached DVB receiver boxes and cards from Digital Everywhere, known as FireDTV and FloppyDTV.

    • This driver currently works together with the old 1394 driver stack only (ieee1394 + ohci1394); compatibility with the new stack (firewire-core + firewire-ohci) will probably follow in the next kernel release. Also, only standard definition channels are supported for now; HD cannot be received yet.

    • The driver works with the DVB-C, -S, -S2, -T variants of FireDTV and FloppyDTV and also supports their remote control and Conditional Access Modules. The driver is meant to be used together with any viewer software which supports Linux’ DVB programming interface, just like PCI or USB DVB receivers.

  • firewire-core

    • Fix potential crash in rapid succession of bus resets.

    • Do not detach protocol drivers (firewire-sbp2 or userspace driver programs) if devices briefly disappear or seem to disappear from the bus. This happens

      • when certain bus-powered hubs are plugged in,

      • when certain devices are plugged into 6-port hubs,

      • when certain disk enclosures are switched from self-power to bus power or vice versa and break the daisy chain during the transition,

      • when certain hubs temporarily malfunction during high bus traffic.

    • Fix rare bugs related to module unloading and to errors during card initialization.

  • firewire-ohci

    • Avoid “context_stop: still active” noise in the kernel log.

    • Increase number of hardware-assisted transmission retries when responder nodes are busy. Fixes AV/C control failures (like in ohci1394). Also fixed in 2.6.28.5 and 2.6.27.16.

  • firewire-sbp2

    • Fix IOMMU resource exhaustion in an error path. Also fixed in 2.6.28.5 and 2.6.27.16.

    • Add workarounds for 2nd and 3rd generation iPods (like in sbp2). Also fixed in 2.6.28.5 and 2.6.27.16.

Linux 2.6.28 (24 December 2008)

  • dv1394

    • Change locking in the mmap() handler to prevent an unlikely deadlock.

  • raw1394

    • Change locking in the mmap() handler to prevent an unlikely deadlock of multithreaded client programs. (It nonetheless is not a good idea to use the same raw1394 file handle in multiple threads; it may be hard to get such a client right.)

    • Change locking in the write() handler to make it multithreading-safe. (But see above.)

    • Remove the Big Kernel Lock from the ioctl() handler for better system performance.

  • ieee1394

    • Fix corruption of CSR response handler list (ARM handlers in raw1394 terminology) on boxes with more than one FireWire controller.

    • Do not detach the sbp2 driver if devices briefly disappear or seem to disappear from the bus. This happens

      • when certain bus-powered hubs are plugged in,

      • when certain disk enclosures are switched from self-power to bus power or vice versa and break the daisy chain during the transition,

      • when the user plugs a cable out and quickly plugs it back in, e.g. to reorder a daisy chain (works on Mac OS X if done quickly enough),

      • when certain hubs temporarily malfunction during high bus traffic.

    • Previously, mounted filesystems on FireWire disks would have been lost at such occasions. But now there is a high chance that they stay accessible.

    • Fix recognition of Freecom FireWire Harddrive. (also in 2.6.27.10)

  • sbp2

    • Add quirk handling for some iPod mini. (also in 2.6.27.8)

  • firewire-core

    • Fix kernel freeze after many bus resets. (also in 2.6.27.5)

    • Fix memory leak at bus reset. (also in 2.6.27.5)

    • Fix iso transmit parameters in the character device file interface. (also in 2.6.27.5)

  • firewire-ohci

    • Fix IOMMU resource leak, e.g. visible as “DMA: Out of SW-IOMMU space” on EM64T boxes and subsequent I/O errors. (also in 2.6.27.10)

    • Fix a memory leak at module removal.

  • firewire-sbp2

    • Improve login and logout handling. (also in 2.6.27.5)

    • Add quirk handling for some iPod mini. (also in 2.6.27.8)

Linux 2.6.27 (9 October 2008)

  • dv1394, raw1394, video1394

    • Include mmap()ed isochronous data buffers in program crash dumps.

  • ieee1394

    • Fix regression since Linux 2.6.25: When new nodes were added to a bus with existing ones, driver updates were not prioritized like in previous kernels. This especially degraded SBP-2 reconnection.

    • Fix connection loss to old nodes when certain devices were plugged into a bus with a 6-port hub.

  • sbp2

    • Spin disks down (i.e. switch spindle motor off) when the system is suspended or shut down, or when the driver is unloaded.

    • Fix disk spin-down for PL-3507 and TSB42AA9 firmwares.

    • Fix connection loss after “Failed to reconnect to sbp2 device” during bus reset series.

  • firewire-core

    • IEEE 1394(a) compliance fixes: Don’t respond to broadcast write requests, implement Broadcast_Channel register. (Not yet done: Allocate broadcast channel.)

    • Fix a kernel panic during asynchronous transmission when a bus reset occurs.

    • Fix reception of block read responses on 64bit architectures.

    • Fix a kernel warning (call trace dump) in the bus reset handling.

  • firewire-ohci

    • Fix isochronous reception with TSB43AB22A controllers on 64bit architectures with more than 2GB memory.

  • firewire-core + firewire-ohci

    • The issue with dvgrab on VIA VT630x OHCI 1.0 cards has been resolved. (DV reception got stuck after one or a few frames, the IR DMA context could not be woken up anymore.) The actual kernel change which resolved this is not known.

  • firewire-sbp2

    • Spin-down feature and fixes as in sbp2

  • Sbp2’s and firewire-sbp2 ‘s spin-down feature is not active in multiple initiator setups, i.e. when non-exclusive login is configured.

Linux 2.6.26 (13 July 2008)

  • ieee1394

    • Fix speed detection with some GOF repeaters.

    • The driver raw1394, video1394, dv1394 are not bound to struct device instances anymore. This change is only important for driver programmers. It is for example necessary for the firesat DVB driver which is currently in the works at the Linux Driver Project.

  • ohci1394

    • Explicitly switch on bus power after suspend/resume on some PowerMacs and PowerBooks.

  • raw1394

    • Change of isochronous transmit policy: If the controller skips a cycle e.g. because of transmit FIFO underflow, the respective packet is now requeued for transmission in the next cycle instead of being dropped.

    • Related change of semantics of the struct raw1394_iso_status.overflows field: upper 16 bits contain number of cycle skips in IT (see above), lower 16 bits contain the “overflows” value as before.

  • firewire-core

    • Properly rescan devices which changed their configuration ROM. This fixes soft-power-off of some FireWire harddisks and similar situations in which the drivers missed that a device went on or off.

    • Fixes: Bus reset loop after PHY config packet transmission; gap count synchronization between all nodes (device detection related); kernel panic due to unexpected reception of PHY packets.

    • After a device was removed, fail open(), ioctl(), mmap() properly with -ENODEV.

  • firewire-ohci

    • New runtime switch to enable verbose logging in dmesg: echo N > /sys/module/firewire_ohci/parameters/debug with N = 0: off (default), 1: asynchronous packet sent or received, 2: self IDs, 4: interrupts, 8: bus reset interrupt events, or a combination (sum) of several of these flags.

    • fixes for asynchronous transactions on Texas Instruments controllers

    • fixes to make JMicron based cards work

    • Explicitly switch on bus power after suspend/resume on some PowerMacs and PowerBooks.

    • stricter error checks in self ID reception

    • new compile-time option FIREWIRE_OHCI_REMOTE_DMA in the Kernel hacking menu of the kernel configuration for remote debugging, only interesting to kernel developers

  • firewire-sbp2

    • Fix detection of some multi-unit devices, e.g. drives in a SONY DVD jukebox.

  • Known issues: The new firewire drivers are still unable to capture DV on VIA VT630x OHCI 1.0 chips. Support for isochronous resource management is still missing in the firewire-core character device API. IP over 1394 implementation equivalent to eth1394 is still not available for the new stack.

Linux 2.6.25 (16 April 2008)

  • sbp2

    • Raise default size limit of requests for better throughput. This brings sbp2 performance on par with firewire-sbp2 on FireWire 800 buses. Alas some older devices cause I/O errors on large requests, but the known broken ones are detected and handled accordingly. If you encounter errors with 2.6.25 which didn’t happen in previous kernels, this change may be the cause; please report it at linux1394-devel then.

    • Fix bogus device additions if rescan-scsi-bus.sh was run. Note, this script is not necessary and even was detrimental with sbp2 in the 2.6 kernel series.

    • Add workaround flag for delay between login and inquiry, flag is active for DViCO FX-3A.

  • firewire-core

    • Fixes for giving up on config rom errors.

    • Fix kobject_add failed for fw* with -EEXIST.

    • Fix kernel crash when firewire-ohci was unloaded.

  • firewire-ohci

    • Fix isochronous reception for IIDC cameras.

    • Fix for systems with more than 3 GB RAM.

    • Fix for systems with IOMMU.

    • Fix for big endian CPUs.

    • Fix module reloading and suspend/resume on Apple PowerMac and PowerBook.

    • Add support for the old Apple UniNorth rev.1 controller.

    • Fix kernel panic in asynchronous transmission.

    • Handle cycle too long condition.

  • firewire-sbp2

    • Several fixes and improvements for device recognition, probing, and reconnection.

    • Fix I/O errors which happened as soon as the PCI bus became slightly busy. Affected were all SBP-2 chipsets except OxSemi ones. This fix is especially required for PL-3507 based devices.

    • Fix bugs caused by rescan-scsi-bus.sh.

  • init_ohci1394_dma

    • This is a new standalone driver, independent of the ieee1394 and firewire driver stacks. It is used for kernel development, particularly remote debugging of kernel initialization. This driver is configured by a kernel build config option in the Kernel hacking menu and a kernel boot parameter. Documentation is provided in the documentation directory of the kernel sources. Driver author is Bernhard Kaindl.

  • Known issues: Regression in ieee1394: When new nodes are added to a bus with existing ones, driver updates are not prioritized like in previous kernels. This especially degrades SBP-2 reconnection. Fixed in Linux 2.6.27.

Linux 2.6.24 (24 January 2008)

  • eth1394

    • Fix locking in a rare error case.

  • ieee1394

    • Fix small memory leak after eth1394 or raw1394 modified the local configuration ROM.

  • firewire-core

    • Adopt read cycle timer ABI like in raw1394 since kernel 2.6.21.

  • firewire-ohci

    • Fix I/O after suspend/resume cycle for protocols which need the onfiguration ROM.

    • Fix leak of DMA mapping tables on non-coherent machines.

    • Check for unlikely error cases: PCI write posting error, self ID malconfiguration.

    • Fix DV reception for a lot of controllers. Note, a few OHCI 1.0 variants of VIA VT630x still don’t work for DV.

  • firewire-sbp2

    • Add support for targets with multiple logical units, e.g. JBOD multi-disk enclosures.

    • Add module load parameter “workarounds” for emergencies. This parameter works just like in the classic sbp2 driver.

    • Fix blocking of keyboard input and other system functions during attachment of devices.

  • sparc64 architecture

    • Fix kernel oops in DMA mapping, notably when loading firewire-ohci. This bug was present since kernel 2.6.23.

  • Known issues: The new firewire stack is still considered experimental. There are several bugs in isochronous reception which especially affect libdc1394. These should be fixed in kernel 2.6.25-rc1. There are also lots of issues with libraw1394 ‘s interface to the new drivers and regarding compatibility with existing applications. Also, firewire-sbp2 does not yet handle bus resets well enough. And work on an IP over 1394 implementation equivalent to eth1394 has not yet started.

  • Linux 2.6.24.1 fixes an “INFO: possible recursive locking detected” warning which appeared in the kernel log e.g. when using dvgrab or firecontrol. The issue was harmless and not caused by the firewire drivers.

Linux 2.6.23 (9 October 2007)

  • ieee1394

    • Properly terminate sysfs attributes vendor_name_kv and model_name_kv.

  • ohci1394

    • Fix initialization on some hardware (some Toshiba Satellite in particular) in non-modular builds. This was a regression since Linux 2.6.19. Also fixed in Linux 2.6.22.9.

  • raw1394

    • Now almost completely fixed for 32bit userland on 64bit kernels. (There remain issues in the rarely used address range mapping functions.)

    • The long deprecated 1st generation isochronous ABI, consisting of the request types RAW1394_REQ_ISO_LISTEN and _SEND, have been removed. Callers of libraw1394 ‘s undocumented functions raw1394_iso_write, raw1394_start_iso_write, raw1394_start_iso_rcv, and raw1394_stop_iso_rcv are affected. Only ancient and obsolete programs used these calls which have been replaced by the more efficient rawiso and video1394 ABIs.

  • sbp2

    • Fix crash in sbp2 initialization on PPC64. This was a regression since Linux 2.6.22. Also fixed in Linux 2.6.22.2.

    • Expose the IEEE1394_SBP2_PHYS_DMA compile-time option on x86-64.

  • firewire-core

    • Add support for S100B…S400B and link speed slower than PHY speed.

    • Optimize bandwidth (gap count) in mixed 1394a/1394b topologies, except with 1394b repeater nodes present.

    • Fix memory leak. Also fixed in Linux 2.6.22.2.

  • firewire-ohci

    • Fix scheduling in atomic context. Also fixed in Linux 2.6.22.2.

    • iBook G3 and older Powerbooks refused to suspend. Also fixed in Linux 2.6.22.9.

    • Fix panic on module unloading while devices were attached.

  • firewire-sbp2

    • Fix “status write for unknown orb” followed by I/O errors.

    • Make it work on CardBus FireWire cards. Also fixed in Linux 2.6.22.2.

    • Port from the old sbp2 driver: Limit sector count for certain old chipsets. Add module load parameter exclusive_login.

Linux 2.6.22 (8 July 2007)

  • eth1394

    • Do not auto-load eth1394 per hotplug whenever a FireWire controller is initialized (usually: when ohci1394 is loaded). Hotplug events (uevents) for eth1394 are now only generated if another IPv4-over-1394 capable node was detected on a FireWire bus.

    • From now on, those who want eth1394 have to load it manually, or simply connect another IPv4-over-1394 capable node (e.g. a PC with Windows XP or OS X), or add eth1394 to a distribution-dependent list of modules to be loaded on boot, or can simulate the old auto-loading together with ohci1394 by the following addition to /etc/modprobe.conf: install ohci1394 /sbin/modprobe eth1394; /sbin/modprobe --ignore-install ohci1394

    • Fix silent packet loss when eth1394 was unable to obtain transaction labels from ieee1394. The bug was noticeable by “eth1394: No more tlabels left” kernel messages.

    • Send GASP packets at S100 if 1394b hardware is present. Fixes eth1394 for S100B…S400B interconnects.

    • Allow users to configure MTU bigger than 1500 if they know what they are doing.

    • Link to a parent device (instead of a virtual parent) in sysfs. This fixes a regression since Linux 2.6.21: Udev rules for persistent naming of network interfaces didn’t work anymore. The fix is also available in Linux 2.6.21.5 and later.

  • ieee1394

    • The values of the sysfs attribute address of unit directories were wrong.

  • raw1394

    • Send asynchronous streams at S100 rather than at a random speed.

  • sbp2

    • Optimized DMA direction. Fixes crash on Xen.

    • New module load parameter: long_ieee1394_id. If left at the default value, nothing changes. If set to y, the format of /sys/bus/scsi/devices/*:*:*:*/ieee1394_id is changed from e.g. 0001041010004beb:0:0 to 0001041010004beb:00042c:0000. This longer form is equivalent to the concatenation of the so-called Target Port Identifier and Logical Unit Identifier as per SCSI Architecture Model. The main benefit is that the same format is also used in the new firewire-sbp2 driver. (Explanation: The ieee1394_id in sysfs is typically used to create persistently named links in /dev/disk/by-id/. I.e. you can add entries like /dev/disk/by-id/ieee1394-0001041010004beb:00042c:0000-part3  /mnt/cx1  hfsplus user,noauto,noatime,force 0 0 to /etc/fstab. With this example you can mount /mnt/cx1 without having to worry whether it’s /dev/sda or sdb or whatever this time you plugged the FireWire disk in. This feature already existed in older kernels, only the format of the ID changed slightly in 2.6.22.)

  • New alternative driver stack in Linux 2.6.22 (experimental, incomplete):

    • firewire-core

      • This is a new driver, part of the new alternative FireWire driver stack known under the nickname Juju, written by Kristian Høgsberg. Functionality-wise, firewire-core is a replacement for ieee1394, raw1394, video1394, and dv1394.

    • firewire-ohci

      • the new driver stack’s equivalent to ohci1394

  • firewire-sbp2

    • the new driver stack’s equivalent to sbp2

  • See Juju Migration and http://marc.info/?l=linux1394-user&m=118401466928264 for additional notes on firewire-core, firewire-ohci, and firewire-sbp2. More documentation on the new drivers will be gradually added to this Wiki.

  • Known issue: Sbp2 crashes on G5 Powermacs. Kernels older than 2.6.22 do not contain the bug. Fixed in Linux 2.6.22.2.

Linux 2.6.21 (25 April 2007)

  • dv1394

    • fixed driver crash on CardBus card ejection (also fixed in Linux 2.6.20.5)

  • ieee1394

    • fixed resume after suspend or hibernation: the local config ROM was not restored which broke protocols like SBP-2 and IP over 1394

    • fixed driver crash or kernel crash if ieee1394 was loaded with parameter disable_nodemgr=1 (new bug in Linux 2.6.20, fix is also in 2.6.20.2)

    • removed the kernel configuration options to export unused symbols for potential out-of-tree drivers and to translate OUIs into company names in sysfs

  • raw1394

    • added feature to simultaneously read the cycle timer and the local system time (At the time of the kernel’s release, the libraw1394 counterpart was in libraw1394 ‘s Subversion repo, pending for the next libraw1394 release)

  • video1394

    • now works on machines with non-coherent DMA, e.g. Intel 64bit machines (also fixed in 2.6.20.2)

  • EM64T, IA64

    • fixed kernel crash related to DMA operations in a lot of drivers, among them video1394 and raw1394, on Intel 64bit machines with more than ~3GB RAM (also fixed in Linux 2.6.19.6 and 2.6.20.2)

Linux 2.6.20 (4 February 2007)

  • dv1394

    • add deprecation note, application software should migrate to raw1394

  • ieee1394

    • set proper symlinks at /sys/bus/ieee1394/driver/*/module

  • ohci1394

    • fix kernel oops and strange hardware faults on some PPC machines when the module was reloaded (fix also in 2.6.19.2)

  • sbp2

    • fix recognition of capabilities of some DVD-ROM/R/W (fix also in 2.6.19.3; only Linux 2.6.19…2.6.19.2 are affected)

    • fix handling of SCSI command REQUEST_SENSE

  • Developer information: Linux 2.6.20 is the last release within which rather stable ieee1394 APIs for kernel drivers are maintained. Starting with Linux 2.6.21, developers of out-of-tree kernel drivers for FireWire hardware may be faced with more or less drastic changes of the kernel-internal APIs. (This does not affect userspace drivers which are built on top of libraw1394, libdc1394 and so on.)

  • Known issue: The ieee1394 option disable_nodemgr=1 will lead to nonfunctional FireWire subsystem or even kernel lockup. This regression has been fixed in 2.6.20.2. Kernels before 2.6.20 do not contain the bug.

Linux kernel version 2.6.1x

Linux 2.6.19 (29 November 2006)

  • eth1394

    • memory alignment problem fixed

  • ieee1394

    • recursive locking fixed

    • optimization of per-host kernel data structures; this apparently also fixed a kernel crash in hpsb_get_tlabel

  • ohci1394

    • initializes before most other device drivers to aid kernel debugging with firescope

  • raw1394

    • kernel freeze in address range mapping functions fixed

  • sbp2

    • HDDs whose motor was stopped after idle time or by another host are now automatically spun up

    • IO errors caused by sbp2util_node_write_no_wait failed fixed

    • another potential deadlock during device removal fixed

    • some combinations of Initio bridges and HDD mechanisms were wrongly detected as write protected; fixed by using a more standards conforming command for sd_mod ‘s probing

  • video1394

    • poll() support added

  • Known issue: Some DVD-ROM/RW were mistaken for CD-ROM. Fixed in 2.6.19.3.

Linux 2.6.18 (19 September 2006)

  • ieee1394

    • less CPU usage in DMA housekeeping

    • support for S100…S400 1394b hardware and for devices with PHY faster than link

  • ohci1394

    • recover from cycle too long errors

  • sbp2

    • spin up Maxtor OneTouch disks when necessary (also in 2.6.17.8)

  • Among the rest of the changes are minor bug fixes, small changes to in-kernel API usage, and a small ieee1394 low-level API extension (for driver developers: two new members in struct hpsb_host which affect address range mapping).

  • Known issue: If the kernel is configured for RW-sem debugging, a recursive locking warning in knodemgrd may appear in the kernel log. This is an old bug, but probably without practical impact. Fixed in 2.6.19.

Linux 2.6.17 (17 June 2006)

  • ieee1394

    • Removed the dormant support for devfs

  • ohci1394

    • PhyUpperBound lowered from ~256 TB to 1 TB on chips which support a programmable PhyUpperBound

  • raw1394

    • 64bit compatibility code for read and write access to /dev/raw1394 (not yet for ioctls)

  • sbp2

    • Fix kernel freeze after disconnecting a device. The fix is also available in Linux 2.6.16.2.

    • Fix compatibility regression with PL-3507 since Linux 2.6.16 (scsi_add_device failed). Also available in 2.6.16.20.

    • Added a workaround for iPods (fixes end_request: I/O error at blocks near the end of the disk). Also available in 2.6.16.20.

    • Added module load parameter workarounds. A numeric parameter which signifies a combination of workarounds for quirky hardware can be given. See “modinfo sbp2”. The now redundant parameter force_inquiry_hack will be removed in a future release.

    • Disabled modprobe -r ohci1394 (or pcilynx) while logged in into an SBP-2 device, preventing inadvertent loss of connection.

Linux 2.6.16 (19 March 2006)

  • The bulk of changes to the IEEE 1394 subsystem since Linux 2.6.15 constitutes of behind-the-scenes cleanups, but there were also several bug fixes.

  • amdtp, cmp

    • These drivers were removed from the kernel. Their functionality is provided by libiec61883 now.

  • ieee1394

    • Bug fix: Suspend-to-disk would deadlock if the swap partition was located on a FireWire disk.

    • Reconnection to storage devices is often quicker now when additional devices get plugged in.

    • small consistency checks added to ROM parsing routines

  • ohci1394

    • logs number of hardware-implemented isochronous contexts when starting

  • raw1394

    • bug fixes for memory deallocation in config ROM manipulation routines

  • sbp2

    • Bug fix: Sbp2 always failed to connect to storage devices with login timed out with ALi and Fujitsu host adapters. This bug was believed to date back to the Mingh dynasty.

    • Bug fix: When a device was unplugged during ongoing I/O, the subsystem could fall into a deadlock, disabling subsequent hotplugs. (Fix is also available in Linux 2.6.15.5.)

    • Bug fix: The 36byte inquiry hack did not work in the last few Linux releases.

    • Bug fix: Resources were not freed when SCSI inquiry failed.

    • SCSI commands are no longer converted between command sets. The SCSI command set drivers, especially sd, are now using the proper command set.

    • Responses to inquiry commands from userspace sg I/O are now passed through as-is.

  • scsi/sd (as far as related to sbp2)

    • Bug fix: Memory corruption was encountered when FireWire disks with Initio bridge chip or some other bridge chips were plugged in. Could cause error messages, application crashes, or kernel panic. (Fix is also available in Linux 2.6.15.5.)

  • video1394

    • Bug fix: Wrong timestamps were generated. (bug from Linux 2.6.11)

    • Bug fix: When an ioctl failed to get a free channel, a wrong error number was returned.

  • several drivers

    • numerous code cleanups without change in functionality (or so we hope)

    • When starting, eth1394, ohci1394, and sbp2 do not log a version number anymore. There is no way to keep a meaningful version number without strictly centralized development model.

    • 1394 subsystem enabled in arch/x86_64/defconfig

  • Known issue: Some storage devices based on Prolific PL-3507 were not accessible anymore. Fixed in 2.6.16.20 and 2.6.17.

Linux 2.6.15 (2 January 2006)

  • ieee1394

    • Fix recognition of some pre-1394a devices, notably LSI based SBP-2 devices. ieee1394 now writes the broadcast channel register only to devices which actually support the register. Fixes also an interoperability regression of Linux 2.6.14.

    • Fix recognition of some devices after the PC was switched off and on, notably of Motorola DCT6200. ieee1394 posts one resume packet to wake up suspended remote ports.

  • pci

    • Workaround for FireWire controller of several Toshiba notebooks.

  • sbp2

    • Fix for occasional oops during command abortion.

  • scsi/sd

    • Fix panic or oops when runing the eject command on an iPod. Fix is also available in Linux 2.6.14.5.

Linux 2.6.14 (27 October 2005)

  • raw1394

    • fix for deadlocks on SMP machines

  • eth1394

    • workaround for 1394b cards, required on some architectures

  • ieee1394

    • bus reset handling slightly changed, helps to detect new devices after a cycle master related reset

    • MODALIAS variable provided to hotplug userspace scripts

  • sbp2

    • serialize_io=1 is now default, for better interoperability (add options sbp2 serialize_io=0 to /etc/modprobe.conf for optimum performance of 1394b disks)

    • fix for hangs of the ieee1394 and scsi subsystems when devices were unplugged, fix for modprobe -r sbp2 (these fixes are also present in Linux 2.6.13.4)

Linux 2.6.12 (17 June 2005)

  • Linux Kernel 2.6.12 contains a major upgrade for IEEE 1394. This is arguably the first stable version of Linux 1394 for 2.6 (your mileage may vary). Not only does it contain many bug fixes resolving all known kernel warnings, it also fixes multi-LUN support for sbp2 and contains new sysfs entries to support udev rules for the generic setup of /dev nodes. See our new FAQ item for example udev rules.