Message-ID: <99bb8cfb-f3f9-f9c7-4323-6899c8d7a1f2@gmail.com>
Date:   Wed, 12 Jun 2019 13:23:25 -0700
From:   Frank Rowand <frowand.list@...il.com>
To:     Saravana Kannan <saravanak@...gle.com>,
        Rob Herring <robh+dt@...nel.org>
Cc:     Greg Kroah-Hartman <gregkh@...uxfoundation.org>,
        Sandeep Patil <sspatil@...roid.com>,
        Mark Rutland <mark.rutland@....com>,
        "Rafael J. Wysocki" <rafael@...nel.org>,
        David Collins <collinsd@...eaurora.org>,
        devicetree@...r.kernel.org,
        "linux-kernel@...r.kernel.org" <linux-kernel@...r.kernel.org>,
        Android Kernel Team <kernel-team@...roid.com>
Subject: Re: [RESEND PATCH v1 1/5] of/platform: Speed up
 of_find_device_by_node()

On 6/12/19 12:29 PM, Saravana Kannan wrote:
> On Wed, Jun 12, 2019 at 11:19 AM Rob Herring <robh+dt@...nel.org> wrote:
>>
>> On Wed, Jun 12, 2019 at 11:08 AM Greg Kroah-Hartman
>> <gregkh@...uxfoundation.org> wrote:
>>>
>>> On Wed, Jun 12, 2019 at 10:53:09AM -0600, Rob Herring wrote:
>>>> On Wed, Jun 12, 2019 at 8:22 AM Greg Kroah-Hartman
>>>> <gregkh@...uxfoundation.org> wrote:
>>>>>
>>>>> On Wed, Jun 12, 2019 at 07:53:39AM -0600, Rob Herring wrote:
>>>>>> On Tue, Jun 11, 2019 at 3:52 PM Sandeep Patil <sspatil@...roid.com> wrote:
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> On Tue, Jun 11, 2019 at 01:56:25PM -0700, 'Saravana Kannan' via kernel-team wrote:
>>>>>>>> On Tue, Jun 11, 2019 at 8:18 AM Frank Rowand <frowand.list@...il.com> wrote:
>>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>> Hi Saravana,
>>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>> On 6/10/19 10:36 AM, Rob Herring wrote:
>>>>>>>>>> Why are you resending this rather than replying to Frank's last
>>>>>>>>>> comments on the original?
>>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>> Adding on a different aspect...  The independent replies from three different
>>>>>>>>> maintainers (Rob, Mark, myself) pointed out architectural issues with the
>>>>>>>>> patch series.  There were also some implementation issues brought out.
>>>>>>>>> (Although I refrained from bringing up most of my implementation issues
>>>>>>>>> as they are not relevant until architecture issues are resolved.)
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>> Right, I'm not too worried about the implementation issues before we
>>>>>>>> settle on the architectural issues. Those are easy to fix.
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>> Honestly, the main points that the maintainers raised are:
>>>>>>>> 1) This is a configuration property and not describing the device.
>>>>>>>> Just use the implicit dependencies coming from existing bindings.
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>> I gave a bunch of reasons for why I think it isn't an OS configuration
>>>>>>>> property. But even if that's not something the maintainers can agree
>>>>>>>> to, I gave a concrete example (cyclic dependencies between clock
>>>>>>>> provider hardware) where the implicit dependencies would prevent one
>>>>>>>> of the devices from probing till the end of time. So even if the
>>>>>>>> maintainers don't agree we should always look at "depends-on" to
>>>>>>>> decide the dependencies, we still need some means to override the
>>>>>>>> implicit dependencies where they don't match the real dependency. Can
>>>>>>>> we use depends-on as an override when the implicit dependencies aren't
>>>>>>>> correct?
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>> 2) This doesn't need to be solved because this is just optimizing
>>>>>>>> probing or saving power ("we should get rid of this auto disabling"):
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>> I explained why this patch series is not just about optimizing probe
>>>>>>>> ordering or saving power. And why we can't ignore auto disabling
>>>>>>>> (because it's more than just auto disabling). The kernel is currently
>>>>>>>> broken when trying to use modules in ARM SoCs (probably in other
>>>>>>>> systems/archs too, but I can't speak for those).
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>> 3) Concerns about backwards compatibility
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>> I pointed out why the current scheme (depends-on being the only source
>>>>>>>> of dependency) doesn't break compatibility. And if we go with
>>>>>>>> "depends-on" as an override what we could do to keep backwards
>>>>>>>> compatibility. Happy to hear more thoughts or discuss options.
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>> 4) How the "sync_state" would work for a device that supplies multiple
>>>>>>>> functionalities but a limited driver.
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> <snip>
>>>>>>> To be clear, all of above are _real_ problems that stops us from efficiently
>>>>>>> load device drivers as modules for Android.
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> So, if 'depends-on' doesn't seem like the right approach and "going back to
>>>>>>> the drawing board" is the ask, could you please point us in the right
>>>>>>> direction?
>>>>>>
>>>>>> Use the dependencies which are already there in DT. That's clocks,
>>>>>> pinctrl, regulators, interrupts, gpio at a minimum. I'm simply not
>>>>>> going to accept duplicating all those dependencies in DT. The downside
>>>>>> for the kernel is you have to address these one by one and can't have
>>>>>> a generic property the driver core code can parse. After that's in
>>>>>> place, then maybe we can consider handling any additional dependencies
>>>>>> not already captured in DT. Once all that is in place, we can probably
>>>>>> sort device and/or driver lists to optimize the probe order (maybe the
>>>>>> driver core already does that now?).
>>>>>>
>>>>>> Get rid of the auto disabling of clocks and regulators in
>>>>>> late_initcall. It's simply not a valid marker that boot is done when
>>>>>> modules are involved. We probably can't get rid of it as lot's of
>>>>>> platforms rely on that, so it will have to be opt out. Make it the
>>>>>> platform's responsibility for ensuring a consistent state.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> Perhaps we need a 'boot done' or 'stop deferring probe' trigger from
>>>>>> userspace in order to make progress if dependencies are missing.
>>>>>
>>>>> People have tried to do this multiple times, and you never really know
>>>>> when "boot is done" due to busses that have discoverable devices and
>>>>> async probing of other busses.
>>>>
>>>> Yes, I know which is why I proposed the second name with more limited
>>>> meaning/function.
>>>
>>> I still don't want to have the kernel have to rely on this.
>>>
>>>>> You do know "something" when you pivot to a new boot disk, and when you
>>>>> try to load init, but given initramfs and the fact that modules are
>>>>> usually included on them, that's not really a good indication that
>>>>> anything is "finished".
>>>>>
>>>>> I don't want userspace to be responsible for telling the kernel, "hey
>>>>> you should be finished now!", as that's an async notification that is
>>>>> going to be ripe for problems.
>>>>
>>>> The usecase I care about here is when the DT has the dependency
>>>> information, but the kernel doesn't have the driver and the dependency
>>>> is never resolved.
>>>
>>> Then we have the same situation as today and nothing different happens,
>>> right?
>>
>> Huh?
>>
>> This works today, but not for modules.
> 
> Replying to this a bit further down.
> 
>>
>>>
>>>> The same problem has to be solved with a
>>>> 'depends-on' property. This easily happens with a new DT with added
>>>> dependencies like pinctrl and an old kernel that doesn't have the
>>>> "new" driver.
> 
> Isn't this the perfect example of an "implicit dependency" in a DT
> node not being a mandatory dependency? The old kernel worked fine with
> older DT without the added pinctrl dependency, so treating it as a
> mandatory dependency seems wrong for that particular device?
> depends-on avoids all this because the older kernel won't parse
> depends-on. And for newer kernels, it'll parse only what depends-on
> says are dependencies and not make wrong assumptions.
> 
>>>> Another example is IOMMUs. We need some way to say stop
>>>> waiting for dependencies. It is really just a debug option (of course,
>>>> how to prevent a debug option from being used in production?). This
>>>> works now for built-in cases with the same late_initcall abuse.
>>>
>>> What is a debug option?  We need something "for real".
>>>
>>>> Using late_initcall_sync as an indicator has all the same problems
>>>> with userspace indicating boot finished. We should get rid of the
>>>> late_initcall_sync abuses and stop trying to work around them.
>>>
>>> I agree, but that's not the issue here.
>>
>> It is because the cover letter mentions it and downstream work around it.
> 
> This patch series is trying to remove the use of late_initcall_sync
> and instead relying on dependency information coming from DT. So, you
> are agreeing with the patchset.
> 
>>>>> I really like the "depends-on" information, as it shows a topology that
>>>>> DT doesn't seem to be able to show today, yet we rely on it in the
>>>>> kernel with the whole deferred probing mess.  To me, there doesn't seem
>>>>> to be any other way to properly "know" this.
>>>>
>>>> As I said, DT *does* have this dependency information already. The
>>>> problem is the kernel probing doesn't use it. Fix that and then we can
>>>> discuss dependencies the DT doesn't provide that the kernel needs.
>>>
>>> Where can the kernel probing be fixed to use it?  What am I missing that
>>> can be done instead of what this patchset does?
>>
>> Somewhere, either in each subsystem or in the DT or core code creating
>> struct devices, you need to iterate thru the dependencies. Take clocks
>> as an example:
>>
>> for each node:
>>   for each 'clocks' phandle
>>     Lookup struct device from clock phandle
>>     Add the clock provider struct device to node's struct device links
>>
>> Now, repeat this for regulators, interrupts, etc.
> 
> I'm more than happy to do this if the maintainers can accept this as a
> solution, but then we need to agree that we need an override property
> if the implicit dependency isn't a mandatory dependency. We also need

Why is a dependency not mandatory?


> to agree on how we do this without breaking backwards compatibility.
> Either as a config option for this feature or have a property in the
> "chosen" node to say it's okay to assume existing bindings imply
> mandatory dependencies (it's just describing the DT more explicitly
> and the kernel will use it to enable this feature).

You lost me here.


> Although regulator binding are a "problem" because the kernel will
> have to parse every property in a node to check if it ends with
> -supply and then treat it as if it's a regulator binding (even though
> it might not be). So regulators will need some kind of "opt out" in
> the kernel (not DT).
> 
>> This series is pretty much doing the same thing, you just have to
>> parse each provider rather than only 'depends-on'.
>>
>> One issue is the struct device for the dependency may not be created
>> yet. I think this series would have the same issue, but haven't dug
>> into how it avoids that or whether it just ignores it and falls back
>> to deferring probe.
> 
> The patch series handles this properly and doesn't fall back to
> deferred probing.
> 
>> I'm also not clear on how you create struct devices and add
>> dependencies before probing gets attempted. If a driver is already
>> registered, probe is going to be attempted before any dependencies are
>> added. I guess the issue is avoided with drivers being modules, but
>> any solution should work for built-in too.
> 
> This is also handled properly in the series.
> 
> I've actually boot tested both these scenarios you call out and the
> patch series handles them properly.
> 
> But you are missing the main point here. The goal isn't to just
> eliminate deferred probing (it's a great side effect even it it just
> stops 99% of them), but also remove the bad assumption that
> late_initcall_sync() means all the devices are probed. The suppliers
> need a better signal (which the patch series provides) to tell when
> they can "unfreeze" the resources left on at boot.
> 
> It's true that device tree overlays can be added after userspace comes
> up, but in those cases whoever is adding the device tree nodes can make
> sure that the resources needed by the "to be added overlay devices" are
> kept at the right level. It's also unlikely that the bootloader is
> leaving resources
> on for these overlay devices because they might never be added.

Just like modules might never be added.

> 
> And even if it doesn't work perfectly for instances with overlays
> (neither does the
> current kernel), it's still better to fix it for the next
> million/billion devices that'll use
> ARM without post boot overlays.

Sorry, you do not get to ignore overlays.

> 
> Thanks,
> Saravana
> 

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