Re: [PATCH v1 1/2] PCI/sysfs: Change read permissions for VPD attributes

[Leon Romanovsky <leon@kernel.org>]

On Mon, Nov 11, 2024 at 04:34:30PM -0800, Stephen Hemminger wrote:
> On Mon, 11 Nov 2024 14:41:04 -0600
> Bjorn Helgaas <helgaas@kernel.org> wrote:
> 
> > On Thu, Nov 07, 2024 at 08:56:56PM +0200, Leon Romanovsky wrote:
> > > From: Leon Romanovsky <leonro@nvidia.com>
> > > 
> > > The Vital Product Data (VPD) attribute is not readable by regular
> > > user without root permissions. Such restriction is not really needed
> > > for many devices in the world, as data presented in that VPD is not
> > > sensitive and access to the HW is safe and tested.
> > > 
> > > This change aligns the permissions of the VPD attribute to be accessible
> > > for read by all users, while write being restricted to root only.
> > > 
> > > For the driver, there is a need to opt-in in order to allow this
> > > functionality.  
> > 
> > I don't think the use case is very strong (and not included at all
> > here).
> > 
> > If we do need to do this, I think it's a property of the device, not
> > the driver.
> 
> I remember some broken PCI devices, which will crash if VPD is read.

This is opt-in feature for devices which are known to be working.
Broken devices will continue to be broken and will continue to require
root permissions for read.

Thanks