Re: [RFC][PATCH 1/3] PM: Introduce new top level suspend and hibernation callbacks

[Benjamin Herrenschmidt <benh@kernel.crashing.org>]

On Thu, 2008-03-20 at 14:26 -0400, Alan Stern wrote:
> 
> One of the things we don't want to do is bind a new driver to a device
> after it has gone through the prepare() stage.  Doing so would involve
> calling the driver's probe() routine, which is likely to want to
> register new children and who knows what else.  The probe routine might 
> even end up running after the device was suspended!  Clearly this 
> should be avoided.
> 
> But the user can force a binding to occur by writing the device's path
> to the driver's "bind" attribute in sysfs.  This means that
> driver_bind() in drivers/base/bus.c will need to know whether or not
> the device has gone through the prepare() stage, which means the device
> structure will need to have a flag set before prepare() is called (more 
> precisely, the flag must be set before dev->sem is released following 
> the call to prepare).
> 
> Either that or else driver_bind() must always block whenever a system
> sleep is in progress.  That would be easier -- but it's a lot like what 
> the freezer would do.  Which would you prefer?

I don't fully understand what you are saying here.

You say "bind a new driver to a device after it has gone through the
prepare() stage"

So either there was already a driver bound to that device, which got a
prepare() callback, and in which case bind() doesn't mean much. Or there
was not, in which case there was no prepare() call involved.

I suppose if you prepare(), then unbind(), then something tries to
bind()... But wouldn't the core flag set after prepare() be plenty
enough to shield against that ?

I fail to see the race you are talking about here.

Ben.