Re: A udev rule to serve the change event of ACPI container?

[joeyli <jlee@suse.com>]

On Fri, Jul 14, 2017 at 10:37:13AM +0200, Michal Hocko wrote:
> On Thu 13-07-17 20:45:21, Joey Lee wrote:
> > On Thu, Jul 13, 2017 at 09:06:19AM +0200, Michal Hocko wrote:
> > > On Thu 13-07-17 14:58:06, Joey Lee wrote:
> [...]
> > > > If BIOS emits ejection event for a ACPI0004 container, someone needs
> > > > to handle the offline/eject jobs of container. Either kernel or user
> > > > space.
> > > > 
> > > > Only sending uevent to individual child device can simplify udev rule,
> > > > but it also means that the kernel needs to offline/eject container
> > > > after all children devices are offlined.
> > > 
> > > Why cannot kernel send this eject command to the BIOS if the whole
> > > container is offline? If it is not then the kernel would send EBUSY to
> > 
> > Current kernel container hot-remove process:
> > 
> >   BIOS -> SCI event -> Kernel ACPI -> uevent -> userland
> >               
> > Then, kernel just calls _OST to expose state to BIOS, then process is
> > stopped. Kernel doesn't wait there for userland to offline each child
> > devices. Either BIOS or userland needs to trigger the container
> > ejection.
> > 
> > > container is offline? If it is not then the kernel would send EBUSY to
> > > the BIOS and BIOS would have to retry after some timeout. Or is it a
> > 
> > The d429e5c122 patch is merged to mainline. So kernel will send
> > DEVICE_BUSY to BIOS after it emits uevent to userland. BIOS can choice
> > to apply the retry approach until OS returns process failure exactly or
> > BIOS timeout.
> > 
> > > problem that currently implemented BIOS firmwares do not implement this
> > > retry?
> > 
> > Yes, we should consider the behavior of old BIOS. Old BIOS doesn't
> > retry/resend the ejection event. So kernel or userland need to take the
> > retry job. Obviously userland runs the retry since the caa73ea15 patch
> > is merged.
> > 
> > IMHO there have two different expectation from user space application.
> > 
> > Applications like DVD player or Burner expect that kernel should
> > info userspace for the ejection, then application can do their cleaning
> > job and re-trigger ejection from userland.
> 
> I am not sure I understand the DVD example because I do not see how it
> fits into the container and online/offline scenario.
>

At least Yasuaki raised similar behavior for container in 2013.
It's similar to the DVD player case, user space application needs
to do something then trigger children offline and ejection of
container.

Base on Yasuaki's explanation, the reason of that he requested the
userland ejection approach is that he got memory hot-remove problem
in 2013. Maybe his problem is already fixed by your patches in current
mainline.

Hi Yasuaki, could you please check that your memory hot-remove problem
is fixed on mainline kernel?  

If Yasuaki's issue is already fixed, then we should consider to let
kernel does the container hot-remove transparently. 

> > But, some other applications like database don't want that their service
> > be stopped when the devices offline/eject. The hot-remove sholud be done by
> > kernel transparently.
> > 
> > We need a way for fill two situations.
> 
> Hmm, so can we trigger the eject from the _kernel_ when the last child
> is offlined?

Kernel needs to remember that the container is under a _EJECTION_ state
that it should waits all children be offlined. Then kernel checks the
container offline state when each individual device is offlined. If
kernel found a container offlined (means that all children are offlined),
and the container is under ejection state, then kernel runs ejection
jobs (removing objects and calls _EJ0). 

To achieve this, I think that the container object needs a _EJECTION_
flag. It helps kernel to remember the state that it set by BIOS's
ejection event.

This approach has some problems: If userland doesn't finish his offline
jobs or userland doesn't do anything, when should kernel clears the 
ejection flag and responses failure by _OST to BIOS?

And, for new BIOS that it has time out mechanism. Currently there have
no way for BIOS to tell kernel that it gives up. It's hard to sync the
kernel container's ejection flag with BIOS. 

Of course the better is that Yasuaki's problem got fixed. Kernel does
the hot-removes container transparently (again). Then we don't need
to worry how to maintain a ejection state in kernel.  

Thanks a lot!
Joey Lee