Re: [PATCH v9 0/7] Solve postboot supplier cleanup and optimize probe ordering

Greg Kroah-Hartman
2019-08-02T06:37:24Z

On Thu, Aug 01, 2019 at 12:59:25PM -0700, Frank Rowand wrote:
> On 8/1/19 12:32 PM, Greg Kroah-Hartman wrote:
> > On Thu, Aug 01, 2019 at 12:28:13PM -0700, Frank Rowand wrote:
> >> Hi Greg,
> >>
> >> On 7/31/19 11:12 PM, Greg Kroah-Hartman wrote:
> >>> On Wed, Jul 31, 2019 at 03:17:13PM -0700, Saravana Kannan wrote:
> >>>> Add device-links to track functional dependencies between devices
> >>>> after they are created (but before they are probed) by looking at
> >>>> their common DT bindings like clocks, interconnects, etc.
> >>>>
> >>>> Having functional dependencies automatically added before the devices
> >>>> are probed, provides the following benefits:
> >>>>
> >>>> - Optimizes device probe order and avoids the useless work of
> >>>> attempting probes of devices that will not probe successfully
> >>>> (because their suppliers aren't present or haven't probed yet).
> >>>>
> >>>> For example, in a commonly available mobile SoC, registering just
> >>>> one consumer device's driver at an initcall level earlier than the
> >>>> supplier device's driver causes 11 failed probe attempts before the
> >>>> consumer device probes successfully. This was with a kernel with all
> >>>> the drivers statically compiled in. This problem gets a lot worse if
> >>>> all the drivers are loaded as modules without direct symbol
> >>>> dependencies.
> >>>>
> >>>> - Supplier devices like clock providers, interconnect providers, etc
> >>>> need to keep the resources they provide active and at a particular
> >>>> state(s) during boot up even if their current set of consumers don't
> >>>> request the resource to be active. This is because the rest of the
> >>>> consumers might not have probed yet and turning off the resource
> >>>> before all the consumers have probed could lead to a hang or
> >>>> undesired user experience.
> >>>>
> >>>> Some frameworks (Eg: regulator) handle this today by turning off
> >>>> "unused" resources at late_initcall_sync and hoping all the devices
> >>>> have probed by then. This is not a valid assumption for systems with
> >>>> loadable modules. Other frameworks (Eg: clock) just don't handle
> >>>> this due to the lack of a clear signal for when they can turn off
> >>>> resources. This leads to downstream hacks to handle cases like this
> >>>> that can easily be solved in the upstream kernel.
> >>>>
> >>>> By linking devices before they are probed, we give suppliers a clear
> >>>> count of the number of dependent consumers. Once all of the
> >>>> consumers are active, the suppliers can turn off the unused
> >>>> resources without making assumptions about the number of consumers.
> >>>>
> >>>> By default we just add device-links to track "driver presence" (probe
> >>>> succeeded) of the supplier device. If any other functionality provided
> >>>> by device-links are needed, it is left to the consumer/supplier
> >>>> devices to change the link when they probe.
> >>>
> >>> All now queued up in my driver-core-testing branch, and if 0-day is
> >>> happy with this, will move it to my "real" driver-core-next branch in a
> >>> day or so to get included in linux-next.
> >>
> >> I have been slow in getting my review out.
> >>
> >> This patch series is not yet ready for sending to Linus, so if putting
> >> this in linux-next implies that it will be in your next pull request
> >> to Linus, please do not put it in linux-next.
> >
> > It means that it will be in my pull request for 5.4-rc1, many many
> > waeeks away from now.
>
> If you are willing to revert the series before the pull request _if_ I
> have significant review issues in the next couple of days, then I am happy
> to see the patches get exposure in linux-next.

If you have significant review issues, yes, I will be glad to revert them.

thanks,

greg k-h