Re: [PATCH 0/5] mlx5 ConnectX diagnostic misc driver

[Greg Kroah-Hartman <gregkh@linuxfoundation.org>]

On Wed, Oct 18, 2023 at 09:00:25AM -0300, Jason Gunthorpe wrote:
> On Wed, Oct 18, 2023 at 10:31:23AM +0200, Greg Kroah-Hartman wrote:
> > On Wed, Oct 18, 2023 at 01:19:36AM -0700, Saeed Mahameed wrote:
> > > Historically a userspace program was used that accessed the PCI register
> > > and config space directly through /sys/bus/pci/.../XXX and could operate
> > > these debugging interfaces in parallel with the running driver.
> > > This approach is incompatible with secure boot and kernel lockdown so this
> > > driver provides a secure and restricted interface to that.
> > 
> > Why not just write a UIO driver for this hardware then?
> 
> The old mechanism relied on direct config space and sometimes mmio
> access to the PCI device. We did a security analysis and concluded
> that approach could not provide the required security for what our
> customers want from the secure boot and lockdown modes. We cannot
> allow a lockdown userspace direct access to those device registers.
> 
> So, it was redesigned to be RPC driven instead of having direct HW
> access. The RPCs allow the device to provide the required level of
> security.
> 
> This new misc driver does not expose any HW registers or interrupts to
> userspace, so it does not seem like a fit for UIO.

Ok, I'll not complain, I always like "real" drivers instead of UIO ones,
nice to see this happen!

thanks,

greg k-h