Re: [PATCH 4/5] driver core: inhibit automatic driver binding on reserved devices

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

On Fri, Oct 22, 2021 at 09:27:41AM -0700, Zev Weiss wrote:
> On Fri, Oct 22, 2021 at 01:57:21AM PDT, Greg Kroah-Hartman wrote:
> > On Fri, Oct 22, 2021 at 01:32:32AM -0700, Zev Weiss wrote:
> > > On Thu, Oct 21, 2021 at 11:46:56PM PDT, Greg Kroah-Hartman wrote:
> > > > On Thu, Oct 21, 2021 at 07:00:31PM -0700, Zev Weiss wrote:
> > > > > Devices whose fwnodes are marked as reserved are instantiated, but
> > > > > will not have a driver bound to them unless userspace explicitly
> > > > > requests it by writing to a 'bind' sysfs file.  This is to enable
> > > > > devices that may require special (userspace-mediated) preparation
> > > > > before a driver can safely probe them.
> > > > >
> > > > > Signed-off-by: Zev Weiss <zev@bewilderbeest.net>
> > > > > ---
> > > > >  drivers/base/bus.c            |  2 +-
> > > > >  drivers/base/dd.c             | 13 ++++++++-----
> > > > >  drivers/dma/idxd/compat.c     |  3 +--
> > > > >  drivers/vfio/mdev/mdev_core.c |  2 +-
> > > > >  include/linux/device.h        | 14 +++++++++++++-
> > > > >  5 files changed, 24 insertions(+), 10 deletions(-)
> > > >
> > > > Ugh, no, I don't really want to add yet-another-state to the driver core
> > > > like this.  Why are these devices even in the kernel with a driver that
> > > > wants to bind to them registered if the driver somehow should NOT be
> > > > bound to it?  Shouldn't all of that logic be in the crazy driver itself
> > > > as that is a very rare and odd thing to do that the driver core should
> > > > not care about at all.
> > > >
> > > > And why does a device need userspace interaction at all?  Again, why
> > > > would the driver not know about this and handle it all directly?
> > > >
> > > 
> > > Let me expand a bit more on the details of the specific situation I'm
> > > dealing with...
> > > 
> > > On a server motherboard we've got a host CPU (Xeon, Epyc, POWER, etc.) and a
> > > baseboard management controller, or BMC (typically an ARM SoC, an ASPEED
> > > AST2500 in my case).  The host CPU's firmware (BIOS/UEFI, ME firmware, etc.)
> > > lives in a SPI flash chip.  Because it's the host's firmware, that flash
> > > chip is connected to and generally (by default) under the control of the
> > > host CPU.
> > > 
> > > But we also want the BMC to be able to perform out-of-band updates to the
> > > host's firmware, so the flash is *also* connected to the BMC.  There's an
> > > external mux (controlled by a GPIO output driven by the BMC) that switches
> > > which processor (host or BMC) is actually driving the SPI signals to the
> > > flash chip, but there's a bunch of other stuff that's also required before
> > > the BMC can flip that switch and take control of the SPI interface:
> > > 
> > >  - the BMC needs to track (and potentially alter) the host's power state
> > > to ensure it's not running (in OpenBMC the existing logic for this is    an
> > > entire non-trivial userspace daemon unto itself)
> > > 
> > >  - it needs to twiddle some other GPIOs to put the ME into recovery mode
> > > 
> > >  - it needs to exchange some IPMI messages with the ME to confirm it got
> > > into recovery mode
> > > 
> > > (Some of the details here are specific to the particular motherboard I'm
> > > working with, but I'd guess other systems probably have broadly similar
> > > requirements.)
> > > 
> > > The firmware flash (or at least the BMC's side of the mux in front of it) is
> > > attached to a spi-nor controller that's well supported by an existing MTD
> > > driver (aspeed-smc), but that driver can't safely probe the chip until all
> > > the stuff described above has been done.  In particular, this means we can't
> > > reasonably bind the driver to that device during the normal
> > > device-discovery/driver-binding done in the BMC's boot process (nor do we
> > > want to, as that would pull the rug out from under the running host).  We
> > > basically only ever want to touch that SPI interface when a user (sysadmin
> > > using the BMC, let's say) has explicitly initiated an out-of-band firmware
> > > update.
> > > 
> > > So we want the kernel to be aware of the device's existence (so that we
> > > *can* bind a driver to it when needed), but we don't want it touching the
> > > device unless we really ask for it.
> > > 
> > > Does that help clarify the motivation for wanting this functionality?
> > 
> > Sure, then just do this type of thing in the driver itself.  Do not have
> > any matching "ids" for this hardware it so that the bus will never call
> > the probe function for this hardware _until_ a manual write happens to
> > the driver's "bind" sysfs file.
> > 
> 
> Perhaps I'm misunderstanding what you're suggesting, but if I just change
> the DT "compatible" string so that the device doesn't match the driver and
> then try to manually bind it, the driver_match_device() check in
> bind_store() prevents that manual bind from actually happening.

Hm, I thought the bus had the ability to 'override' this somehow.  The
bus does get the callback in driver_match_device() so maybe do the logic
in there?  Somehow this works for other devices and busses, so there
must be a way it happens...

thanks,

greg k-h