Re: [REGRESSION] Recent swiotlb DMA_FROM_DEVICE fixes break ath9k-based AP

Linus Torvalds
2022-03-27T05:21:35Z

On Sat, Mar 26, 2022 at 10:06 PM Linus Torvalds
<torvalds@linux-foundation.org> wrote:
>
> On Sat, Mar 26, 2022 at 8:49 PM Halil Pasic <pasic@linux.ibm.com> wrote:
> >
> > I agree it CPU modified buffers *concurrently* with DMA can never work,
> > and I believe the ownership model was conceived to prevent this
> > situation.
>
> But that just means that the "ownership" model is garbage, and cannot
> handle this REAL LIFE situation.

Just to clarify: I obviously agree that the "both sides modify
concurrently" obviously cannot work with bounce buffers.

People still do want to do that, but they'll limit themselves to
actual cache-coherent DMA when they do so (or do nasty uncached
accesses but at least no bounce buffering).

But the "bounce ownership back and forth" model comes up empty when
the CPU wants to read while the DMA is still going on. And that not
only can work, but *has* worked.

You could have a new "get me a non-ownership copy" operation of
course, but that hits the problem of "which existing drivers need it?"

We have no idea, outside of ath9k.

This is why I believe we have to keep the existing semantics in a way
that keep ath9k - and any number of unknown other drivers - happy.

And then for the cases where you want to introduce the zeroing because
you don't know how much data the DMA returned - those are the ones
you'll have to mark some way.

Linus