Re: [PATCH v9 9/9] PCI: Add a new 'boot_display' attribute

[Mario Limonciello <superm1@kernel.org>]

On 7/18/2025 12:25 PM, Bjorn Helgaas wrote:
> On Thu, Jul 17, 2025 at 12:38:12PM -0500, Mario Limonciello wrote:
>> From: Mario Limonciello <mario.limonciello@amd.com>
>>
>> On systems with multiple GPUs there can be uncertainty which GPU is the
>> primary one used to drive the display at bootup. In some desktop
>> environments this can lead to increased power consumption because
>> secondary GPUs may be used for rendering and never go to a low power
>> state. In order to disambiguate this add a new sysfs attribute
>> 'boot_display' that uses the output of video_is_primary_device() to
>> populate whether a PCI device was used for driving the display.
> 
>> +What:		/sys/bus/pci/devices/.../boot_display
>> +Date:		October 2025
>> +Contact:	Linux PCI developers <linux-pci@vger.kernel.org>
>> +Description:
>> +		This file indicates that displays connected to the device were
>> +		used to display the boot sequence.  If a display connected to
>> +		the device was used to display the boot sequence the file will
>> +		be present and contain "1".
> 
>>   int __must_check pci_create_sysfs_dev_files(struct pci_dev *pdev)
>>   {
>> +	int retval;
>> +
>>   	if (!sysfs_initialized)
>>   		return -EACCES;
>>   
>> +	retval = pci_create_boot_display_file(pdev);
> 
> In addition to Mani's question about whether /sys/bus/pci/ is the
> right place for this (which is a very good question), it's also been
> pointed out to me that we've been trying to get rid of
> pci_create_sysfs_dev_files() for years.
> 
> If it's possible to make this a static attribute that would be much,
> much cleaner.

Right - I tried to do this, but the problem is at the time the PCI 
device is created the information needed to make the judgement isn't 
ready.  The options end up being:
* a sysfs file for every display device with 0/1
* a sysfs file that is not accurate until later in the boot

So IMO it /needs/ to come later.

> 
>> +	if (retval)
>> +		return retval;
>> +
>>   	return pci_create_resource_files(pdev);
>>   }
>>   
>> @@ -1671,6 +1716,7 @@ void pci_remove_sysfs_dev_files(struct pci_dev *pdev)
>>   	if (!sysfs_initialized)
>>   		return;
>>   
>> +	pci_remove_boot_display_file(pdev);
>>   	pci_remove_resource_files(pdev);
>>   }
>>   
>> -- 
>> 2.43.0
>>