Re: [RFC PATCH] PCI: Introduce new device binding path using pci_dev.driver_override

Alex Williamson
2014-04-01T17:16:23Z

On Tue, 2014-04-01 at 09:47 -0700, Greg KH wrote:
> On Tue, Apr 01, 2014 at 10:28:54AM -0600, Alex Williamson wrote:
> > The driver_override field allows us to specify the driver for a device
> > rather than relying on the driver to provide a positive match of the
> > device. This shortcuts the existing process of looking up the vendor
> > and device ID, adding them to the driver new_id, binding the device,
> > then removing the ID, but it also provides a couple advantages.
> >
> > First, the above process allows the driver to bind to any device
> > matching the new_id for the window where it's enabled. This is often
> > not desired, such as the case of trying to bind a single device to a
> > meta driver like pci-stub or vfio-pci. Using driver_override we can
> > do this deterministically using:
> >
> > echo pci-stub > /sys/bus/pci/devices/0000:03:00.0/driver_override
> > echo 0000:03:00.0 > /sys/bus/pci/devices/0000:03:00.0/driver/unbind
> > echo 0000:03:00.0 > /sys/bus/pci/drivers_probe
> >
> > Previously we could not invoke drivers_probe after adding a device
> > to new_id for a driver as we get non-deterministic behavior whether
> > the driver we intend or the standard driver will claim the device.
> > Now it becomes a deterministic process, only the driver matching
> > driver_override will probe the device.
> >
> > To return the device to the standard driver, we simply clear the
> > driver_override and reprobe the device, ex:
> >
> > echo > /sys/bus/pci/devices/0000:03:00.0/preferred_driver
> > echo 0000:03:00.0 > /sys/bus/pci/devices/0000:03:00.0/driver/unbind
> > echo 0000:03:00.0 > /sys/bus/pci/drivers_probe
> >
> > Another advantage to this approach is that we can specify a driver
> > override to force a specific binding or prevent any binding. For
> > instance when an IOMMU group is exposed to userspace through VFIO
> > we require that all devices within that group are owned by VFIO.
> > However, devices can be hot-added into an IOMMU group, in which case
> > we want to prevent the device from binding to any driver (preferred
> > driver = "none") or perhaps have it automatically bind to vfio-pci.
> > With driver_override it's a simple matter for this field to be set
> > internally when the device is first discovered to prevent driver
> > matches.
> >
> > Signed-off-by: Alex Williamson <alex.williamson@redhat.com>
> > ---
> >
> > Apologies for the exceptionally long cc list, this is a follow-up to
> > Stuart's "Subject: mechanism to allow a driver to bind to any device"
> > thread. This is effectively a v2 of the proof-of-concept patch I
> > posted in that thread. This version changes to use a dummy id struct
> > to return on an "override" match, which removes the collateral damage
> > and greatly simplifies the patch. This feels fairly well baked for
> > PCI and I would expect that platform drivers could do a similar
> > implementation. From there perhaps we can discuss whether there's
> > any advantage to placing driver_override on struct device. The logic
> > for incorporating it into the match still needs to happen per bus
> > driver, so it might only contribute to consistency of the show/store
> > sysfs attributes to move it up to struct device. Please comment.
> > Thanks,
> >
> > Alex
> >
> > drivers/pci/pci-driver.c | 25 ++++++++++++++++++++++---
> > drivers/pci/pci-sysfs.c | 40 ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
> > include/linux/pci.h | 1 +
> > 3 files changed, 63 insertions(+), 3 deletions(-)
>
> No Documentation/ABI/ update to reflect the ABI you are creating?

Oops, thanks for the reminder. I'd propose this:

diff --git a/Documentation/ABI/testing/sysfs-bus-pci b/Documentation/ABI/testing/sysfs-bus-pci
index a3c5a66..55ca6e5 100644
--- a/Documentation/ABI/testing/sysfs-bus-pci
+++ b/Documentation/ABI/testing/sysfs-bus-pci
@@ -250,3 +250,21 @@ Description:
valid. For example, writing a 2 to this file when sriov_numvfs
is not 0 and not 2 already will return an error. Writing a 10
when the value of sriov_totalvfs is 8 will return an error.
+
+What: /sys/bus/pci/devices/.../driver_override
+Date: April 2014
+Contact: Alex Williamson <alex.williamson@redhat.com>
+Description:
+ This file allows the driver for a device to be specified
+ which will override standard static and dynamic ID matching.
+ When specified, only a driver with a name matching the value
+ written to driver_override will have an opportunity to bind
+ to the device. The override may be cleared by writing an
+ empty string (ex. echo > driver_override), returning the
+ device to standard matching rules binding. Writing to
+ driver_override does not automatically unbind the device from
+ its current driver or make any attempt to automatically load
+ the specified driver name. If no driver with a matching name
+ is currently loaded in the kernel, no match will be found.
+ This also allows devices to opt-out of driver binding using
+ a driver_override name such as "none".

Thanks,
Alex