Re: [PATCH] mfd: cros_ec: retry commands when EC is known to be busy

[Lee Jones <lee.jones@linaro.org>]

On Tue, 22 May 2018, Brian Norris wrote:

> Commit 001dde9400d5 ("mfd: cros ec: spi: Fix "in progress" error
> signaling") pointed out some bad code, but its analysis and conclusion
> was not 100% correct.
> 
> It *is* correct that we should not propagate result==EC_RES_IN_PROGRESS
> for transport errors, because this has a special meaning -- that we
> should follow up with EC_CMD_GET_COMMS_STATUS until the EC is no longer
> busy. This is definitely the wrong thing for many commands, because
> among other problems, EC_CMD_GET_COMMS_STATUS doesn't actually retrieve
> any RX data from the EC, so commands that expected some data back will
> instead start processing junk.
> 
> For such commands, the right answer is to either propagate the error
> (and return that error to the caller) or resend the original command
> (*not* EC_CMD_GET_COMMS_STATUS).
> 
> Unfortunately, commit 001dde9400d5 forgets a crucial point: that for
> some long-running operations, the EC physically cannot respond to
> commands any more. For example, with EC_CMD_FLASH_ERASE, the EC may be
> re-flashing its own code regions, so it can't respond to SPI interrupts.
> Instead, the EC prepares us ahead of time for being busy for a "long"
> time, and fills its hardware buffer with EC_SPI_PAST_END. Thus, we
> expect to see several "transport" errors (or, messages filled with
> EC_SPI_PAST_END). So we should really translate that to a retryable
> error (-EAGAIN) and continue sending EC_CMD_GET_COMMS_STATUS until we
> get a ready status.
> 
> IOW, it is actually important to treat some of these "junk" values as
> retryable errors.
> 
> Together with commit 001dde9400d5, this resolves bugs like the
> following:
> 
> 1. EC_CMD_FLASH_ERASE now works again (with commit 001dde9400d5, we
>    would abort the first time we saw EC_SPI_PAST_END)
> 2. Before commit 001dde9400d5, transport errors (e.g.,
>    EC_SPI_RX_BAD_DATA) seen in other commands (e.g.,
>    EC_CMD_RTC_GET_VALUE) used to yield junk data in the RX buffer; they
>    will now yield -EAGAIN return values, and tools like 'hwclock' will
>    simply fail instead of retrieving and re-programming undefined time
>    values
> 
> Fixes: 001dde9400d5 ("mfd: cros ec: spi: Fix "in progress" error signaling")
> Signed-off-by: Brian Norris <briannorris@chromium.org>
> ---
>  drivers/mfd/cros_ec_spi.c               | 24 ++++++++++++++++++++----
>  drivers/platform/chrome/cros_ec_proto.c |  2 ++
>  2 files changed, 22 insertions(+), 4 deletions(-)

I'm convinced.

Applied, thanks.

-- 
Lee Jones [李琼斯]
Linaro Services Technical Lead
Linaro.org │ Open source software for ARM SoCs
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