Re: [PATCH v5 02/22] liveupdate: luo_core: integrate with KHO

Pasha Tatashin
2025-11-13T18:38:39Z

On Thu, Nov 13, 2025 at 11:32 AM Mike Rapoport <rppt@kernel.org> wrote:
>
> On Wed, Nov 12, 2025 at 09:58:27AM -0500, Pasha Tatashin wrote:
> > On Wed, Nov 12, 2025 at 8:25 AM Mike Rapoport <rppt@kernel.org> wrote:
> > >
> > > Hi Pasha,
> > >
> > > On Tue, Nov 11, 2025 at 03:57:39PM -0500, Pasha Tatashin wrote:
> > > > Hi Mike,
> > > >
> > > > Thank you for review, my comments below:
> > > >
> > > > > > This is why this call is placed first in reboot(), before any
> > > > > > irreversible reboot notifiers or shutdown callbacks are performed. If
> > > > > > an allocation problem occurs in KHO, the error is simply reported back
> > > > > > to userspace, and the live update update is safely aborted.
> > >
> > > The call to liveupdate_reboot() is just before kernel_kexec(). Why we don't
> > > move it there?
> >
> > Yes, I can move that call into kernel_kexec().
> >
> > > And all the liveupdate_reboot() does if kho_finalize() fails it's massaging
> > > the error value before returning it to userspace. Why kernel_kexec() can't
> > > do the same?
> >
> > We could do that. It would look something like this:
> >
> > if (liveupdate_enabled())
> > kho_finalize();
> >
> > Because we want to do kho_finalize() from kernel_kexec only when we do
> > live update.
> >
> > > > > This is fine. But what I don't like is that we can't use kho without
> > > > > liveupdate. We are making debugfs optional, we have a way to call
> >
> > This is exactly the fix I proposed:
> >
> > 1. When live-update is enabled, always disable "finalize" debugfs API.
> > 2. When live-update is disabled, always enable "finalize" debugfs API.
>
> I don't mind the concept, what I do mind is sprinkling liveupdate_enabled()
> in KHO.

Sure, let's just unconditionally do kho_fill_kimage().

> How about we kill debugfs/kho/out/abort and make kho_finalize() overwrite
> an existing FDT if there was any?
>
> Abort was required to allow rollback for subsystems that had kho notifiers,
> but now notifiers are gone and kho_abort() only frees the memory
> serialization data. I don't see an issue with kho_finalize() from debugfs
> being a tad slower because of a call to kho_abort() and the liveupdate path
> anyway won't incur that penalty.

Sounds good to me.

> > > KHO should not call into liveupdate. That's layering violation.
> > > And "stateless KHO" does not really make it stateless, it only removes the
> > > memory serialization from kho_finalize(), but it's still required to pack
> > > the FDT.
> >
> > This touches on a point I've raised in the KHO sync meetings: to be
> > effective, the "stateless KHO" work must also make subtree add/remove
> > stateless. There should not be a separate "finalize" state just to
> > finish the FDT. The KHO FDT is tiny (only one page), and there are
> > only a handful of subtrees. Adding and removing subtrees is cheap; we
> > should be able to open FDT, modify it, and finish FDT on every
> > operation. There's no need for a special finalization state at kexec
> > time. KHO should be totally stateless.
>
> And as the first step we can drop 'if (!kho_out.finalized)' from
> kho_fill_kimage(). We might need to massage the check for valid FDT in
> kho_populate() to avoid unnecessary noise, but largely there's no issue
> with always passing KHO data in kimage.

Sounds good, let me work on this patch.

Pasha