Re: [RFC 00/47] mtd: nand: Add new driver supporting ST's BCH h/w

Lee Jones
2014-04-01T11:30:00Z

> > > The call to nand_scan_tail() would remove the need to export those NAND
> > > core functions, and remove the need to scan and print the bad blocks.
> > > I don't know if you have a real reason for not doing it this way, or
> > > maybe it's the way this driver was originally written.
> > >
> > > Care to review this and re-spin the driver? You'll have a more nicer
> > > driver, and more framework-compliant.
> >
> > A hearty +1 to this. You are avoiding much of the core of the NAND
> > framework by avoiding the nand_chip callbacks and nand_scan_tail(), and
> > by reimplementing the BBT. I will have to NAK to some of the patches
> > that EXPORT the nand_base private core (e.g., nand_get_device()), and I
> > will most likely NAK the custom BBT implementation (please improve
> > nand_bbt.c as needed).
>
> This is a good catch. I will attempt to reimplement the driver's
> initialisation steps to utilise more of the core infrastructure in an
> attempt to mitigate the requirement for exportation of private
> routines.
>
> The BBT requirements are somewhere more complex. To provide you with
> the complete picture, a little knowledge of driver history is
> required. When it was initially created the MTD core only supported
> OOB BBTs, but the ST BCH Controller doesn't support OOB access, so
> Angus wrote his on In-Band (IB) implementation. Unfortunately the IB
> support which _is_ now present in the kernel doesn't match the
> internal implementation. Normally this wouldn't be an issue in itself,
> but ST's boot-stack and tooling (Primary Bootloader, U-Boot, various
> Programmers, etc) are aware of the internal IB BTT and utilise it
> in varying ways. Shifting over to the Mainline version in
> one-foul-swoop _will_ cause lots of pain and will probably result in
> the disownership of driver we're trying to Mainline today. Naturally
> I'm keen to avoid this.

Just looking into this now. Can I add support for a vendor specific
signature extension? ST's flashers, bootloaders and tooling currently
use the format:

/* Extend IBBT header with some stm-nand-bch niceties */
struct nand_ibbt_bch_header {
uint8_t signature[4]; /* "Bbt0" or "1tbB" signature */
uint8_t version; /* BBT version ("age") */
uint8_t reserved[3]; /* padding */
uint8_t baseschema[4]; /* "base" schema (x4) */
uint8_t privschema[4]; /* "private" schema (x4) */
uint8_t ecc_size[4]; /* ECC bytes (0, 32, 54) (x4) */
char author[64]; /* Arbitrary string for S/W to use */
}; __attribute__((__packed__))

It would be great if we can support this with a descriptor option or
suchlike, as it would a) save me a lot of aggravation and b) continue
to support ST with their current use-case.

--
Lee Jones
Linaro STMicroelectronics Landing Team Lead
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