Re: [PATCH 4/5] driver core: inhibit automatic driver binding on reserved devices

Greg Kroah-Hartman
2021-10-25T13:34:10Z

On Mon, Oct 25, 2021 at 08:20:05AM -0500, Patrick Williams wrote:
> On Mon, Oct 25, 2021 at 03:58:25PM +0300, Andy Shevchenko wrote:
> > On Mon, Oct 25, 2021 at 06:44:26AM -0500, Patrick Williams wrote:
> > > On Mon, Oct 25, 2021 at 08:15:41AM +0200, Greg Kroah-Hartman wrote:
> > > > On Mon, Oct 25, 2021 at 12:38:08AM -0500, Frank Rowand wrote:
> > > > > On 10/23/21 3:56 AM, Greg Kroah-Hartman wrote:
> > >
> > > > We have the bind/unbind ability today, from userspace, that can control
> > > > this. Why not just have Linux grab the device when it boots, and then
> > > > when userspace wants to "give the device up", it writes to "unbind" in
> > > > sysfs, and then when all is done, it writes to the "bind" file and then
> > > > Linux takes back over.
> > > >
> > > > Unless for some reason Linux should _not_ grab the device when booting,
> > > > then things get messier, as we have seen in this thread.
> > >
> > > This is probably more typical on a BMC than atypical. The systems often require
> > > the BMC (running Linux) to be able to reboot independently from the managed host
> > > (running anything). In the example Zev gave, the BMC rebooting would rip away
> > > the BIOS chip from the running host.
> > >
> > > The BMC almost always needs to come up in a "I don't know what could possibly be
> > > going on in the system" state and re-discover where the system was left off.
> >
> > Isn't it an architectural issue then?
>
> I'm not sure what "it" you are referring to here.
>
> I was trying to explain why starting in "bind" state is not a good idea for a
> BMC in most of these cases where we want to be able to dynamically add a device.

I think "it" is "something needs to be the moderator between the two
operating systems". What is the external entity that handles the
switching between the two?

thanks,

greg k-h