Panthor (Mali-G610 driver) requests mali_csffw.bin at ~1.2s, before /vendor
mounts at ~2.4s. With FW_LOADER_USER_HELPER intentionally disabled, the
firmware request fails instantly and probe fails. Embed the 276KB blob
directly in the kernel Image so firmware is always available at probe time.
Also disable CONFIG_DRM_PANFROST (Midgard/Bifrost driver) — it will never
bind a Valhall G610 GPU and is dead weight alongside panthor.
Copyright (C) 2026 Brendan Szymanski <hello@bscubed.dev>
cfg80211 requests regulatory.db once at ~1.3s — before /vendor mounts at
~2.5s — and caches the failure forever (regdb = ERR_PTR in
net/wireless/reg.c), leaving the kernel stuck in the world regulatory
domain: every 5GHz channel PASSIVE-SCAN, TX capped at 20dBm, and no way
to apply the US country code hint from the framework. On a network whose
AP sits on a DFS channel (ch 144 here) the adapter may never actively
probe, causing intermittent scan misses and multi-minute connects. No
runtime recovery is possible without root (NL80211_CMD_RELOAD_REGDB).
Similarly, an mt7921u adapter present at power-on requests its firmware
pre-/vendor, fails, and wastes ~31s in an MCU retry loop ('Failed to get
patch semaphore') before wireless_reprobe.sh can rebind it post-mount.
Embedded firmware is checked before any filesystem path, so both load
deterministically at first probe regardless of partition mount order.
Files live under firmware/ (CONFIG_EXTRA_FIRMWARE_DIR is srctree-relative);
firmware/.gitignore un-ignores them from the root *.bin exclusion. Adds
~890KB to the Image. Other USB adapters still use the reprobe fallback.
