Re: [PATCH v2 06/10] PCI/LUO: Save and restore driver name

Pasha Tatashin
2025-09-30T14:54:28Z

On Tue, Sep 30, 2025 at 9:41 AM Greg Kroah-Hartman
<gregkh@linuxfoundation.org> wrote:
>
> On Tue, Sep 30, 2025 at 09:02:44AM -0400, Pasha Tatashin wrote:
> > On Mon, Sep 29, 2025 at 10:10 PM Chris Li <chrisl@kernel.org> wrote:
> > >
> > > On Mon, Sep 29, 2025 at 10:57 AM Jason Gunthorpe <jgg@ziepe.ca> wrote:
> > > >
> > > > On Tue, Sep 16, 2025 at 12:45:14AM -0700, Chris Li wrote:
> > > > > Save the PCI driver name into "struct pci_dev_ser" during the PCI
> > > > > prepare callback.
> > > > >
> > > > > After kexec, use driver_set_override() to ensure the device is
> > > > > bound only to the saved driver.
> > > >
> > > > This doesn't seem like a great idea, driver name should not be made
> > > > ABI.
> > >
> > > Let's break it down with baby steps.
> > >
> > > 1) Do you agree the liveupdated PCI device needs to bind to the exact
> > > same driver after kexec?
> > > To me that is a firm yes. If the driver binds to another driver, we
> > > can't expect the other driver will understand the original driver's
> > > saved state.
> >
> > Hi Chris,
> >
> > Driver name does not have to be an ABI.
>
> A driver name can NEVER be an abi, please don't do that.
>
> > Drivers that support live
> > updates should provide a live update-specific ABI to detect
> > compatibility with the preserved data. We can use a preservation
> > schema GUID for this.
> >
> > > 2) Assume the 1) is yes from you. Are you just not happy that the
> > > kernel saves the driver name? You want user space to save it, is that
> > > it?
> > > How does it reference the driver after kexec otherwise?
> >
> > If we use GUID, drivers would advertise the GUIDs they support and we
> > would modify the core device-driver matching process to use this
> > information.
> >
> > Each driver that supports this mechanism would need to declare an
> > array of GUIDs it is compatible with. This would be a new field in its
> > struct pci_driver.
> >
> > static const guid_t my_driver_guids[] = {
> > GUID_INIT(0x123e4567, ...), // Schema V1
> > GUID_INIT(0x987a6543, ...), // Schema V2
> > {},
> > };
>
> That's crazy, who is going to be adding all of that to all drivers? And

Only to the drivers that support live updates, that would be just a few drivers.

> knowing to bump this if the internal data representaion changes? And it
> will change underneath it without the driver even knowing? This feels
> really really wrong, unless I'm missing something.

A driver that preserves state across a reboot already has an implicit
contract with its future self about that data's format. The GUID
simply makes that contract explicit and machine-checkable. It does not
have to be GUID, but nevertheless there has to be a specific contract.

Pasha