[Bug 215906] DMAR fault when connected usb hub (xhci_hcd)

[bugzilla-daemon@kernel.org]

https://bugzilla.kernel.org/show_bug.cgi?id=215906

--- Comment #11 from Chris Bainbridge (chris.bainbridge@gmail.com) ---
(In reply to The Linux kernel's regression tracker (Thorsten Leemhuis) from
comment #10)
> (In reply to Chris Bainbridge from comment #9)
> > The IOMMU error is caused by a buggy VL805 firmware. 
> 
> Makes me wonder: would it be possible to detect an old firmware and avoid
> the IOMMU path in this case? Or at least warn?

It would be possible to detect, the firmware version can be read with: 

$ sudo lspci -d 1106:3483 -xxx | awk '/^50:/ { print "VL805 FW version: " $5 $4
$3 $2 }'
VL805 FW version: 00013500

imho it would be a good idea for Linux to track the latest firmware versions
for *all* hardware and warn if a firmware is out-of-date (even if the firmware
updater is only available on Windows). Earlier this year I had an intermittent
issue with a new laptop where the desktop would hang and processes would get IO
errors. But this only happened once every 3 weeks or so. It took a few months
to isolate the problem to NVME firmware (it was a HP laptop with Intel NVME,
and I was unaware that these drives have locked HP-specific firmware). The
firmware update was a Windows executable. I've also seen many forum posts where
people have problems that were resolved by updates to
GPU/motherboard/NVME/ethernet/wifi etc. firmware. Many of these problems could
have been resolved a lot quicker if the kernel log contained "old firmware
detected!".

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