Re: [GIT PULL] Driver core changes for 7.0-rc1

Linus Torvalds
2026-03-01T07:56:48Z

On Sat, 28 Feb 2026 at 23:44, Linus Torvalds
<torvalds@linux-foundation.org> wrote:
>
> In other words, it makes fragile drivers go from "you get an oops" to
> something much worse. The oops becomes unrecoverable - with typically
> a black screen at boot - because the probe is holding a lock that then
> makes everything else come to a grinding halt when the driver fails.

See this message:

https://lore.kernel.org/all/67f655bb-4d81-4609-b008-68d200255dd2@davidgow.net/

on the interaction with the driver core merge with the firewire oops bug.

In this case we were actually somewhat lucky, in that the hardware is
fairly common, but seldom actually used - a combination that meant tht
wer had several people who caught it fairly quickly and were willing
and able to bisect it. I had the first report the day after -rc1 was
released.

IOW, it could have been *so* much worse. Imagine some random driver
bug on hardware that isn't common and just causes inexplicable boot
failures for the people who see it and are likely using distro
kernels.

Linus