Re: TPM selftest failure in 4.15

[James Bottomley <James.Bottomley@HansenPartnership.com>]

On Thu, 2018-02-08 at 15:10 +0200, Jarkko Sakkinen wrote:
> On Thu, Feb 01, 2018 at 09:00:04PM +0100, James Bottomley wrote:
> > 
> > On Thu, 2018-02-01 at 11:59 -0700, Jason Gunthorpe wrote:
> > > 
> > > On Thu, Feb 01, 2018 at 07:46:04PM +0100, James Bottomley wrote:
> > > 
> > > > 
> > > > 
> > > > I honestly don't think we should be waiting for the self test
> > > > at
> > > > all.
> > > > We should kick it off and treat any TPM_RC_TESTING error as
> > > > -EAGAIN.
> > > > We're already under fire for slow boot sequences and adding 2s
> > > > just
> > > > to
> > > > wait for the TPM to self test adds to that for no real value.
> > > 
> > > Arguably the BIOS should have completed the selftest - this stuff
> > > generally only exists to support embedded.
> > > 
> > > I don't like the idea of EAGAIN, that just expose all our users
> > > to
> > > this mess.
> > > 
> > > I would support making transmit_cmd genericly wait and retry if
> > > the
> > > TPM insists we need to wait for selftest to complete the specific
> > > command though.
> > 
> > OK, how about this then?
> > 
> > James
> 
> As long as there is no identified a regression it is a waste
> of time to review these...

There is an identified regression: the TPM driver will now periodically
fail to attach.  However, there's no point reviewing until we agree
what the fix is.  I was just waiting to verify this fixed my problem
(which means seeing the messages it spits out proving the TPM has
remained in self test).  I have now seen this and the driver still
works, so I can submit a formal patch.

James