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

Pasha Tatashin
2025-09-30T13:03:22Z

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. 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
{},
};

static struct pci_driver my_pci_driver = {
.name = "my_driver",
.id_table = my_pci_ids,
.probe = my_probe,
.live_update_guids = my_driver_guids,
};

The kernel's PCI core would perform an extra check before falling back
to the standard PCI ID matching.
1. When a PCI device is discovered, the core first asks the Live
Update framework: "Is there a preserved GUID for this device?"
2. If a GUID is found, the core will only attempt to bind drivers that
both match the device's PCI ID and have that specific GUID in their
live_update_guids list.
3. If no GUID is preserved for the device, the core proceeds with the
normal matching logic
4. If no driver matches the GUID, the device is left unbound. The
state gets removed during finish(), and the device is reset.

Pasha