linux-kernel - Re: [PATCH] modpost: drop '*_probe' from section check whitelist

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Message-ID: <aRS6VQCKB7dXGbXx@hovoldconsulting.com>
Date: Wed, 12 Nov 2025 17:48:21 +0100
From: Johan Hovold <johan@...nel.org>
To: Nathan Chancellor <nathan@...nel.org>
Cc: Nicolas Schier <nicolas.schier@...ux.dev>,
	Masahiro Yamada <masahiroy@...nel.org>,
	Thomas Gleixner <tglx@...utronix.de>, linux-kbuild@...r.kernel.org,
	linux-kernel@...r.kernel.org,
	Daniel Lezcano <daniel.lezcano@...aro.org>
Subject: Re: [PATCH] modpost: drop '*_probe' from section check whitelist

Hi Nathan,

On Wed, Oct 22, 2025 at 10:39:55PM +0200, Nathan Chancellor wrote:
> On Mon, Oct 20, 2025 at 11:16:13AM +0200, Johan Hovold wrote:
> > Several symbol patterns used to be whitelisted to allow drivers to refer
> > to functions annotated with __devinit and __devexit, which have since
> > been removed.
> > 
> > Commit e1dc1bfe5b27 ("modpost: remove more symbol patterns from the
> > section check whitelist") removed most of these patterns but left
> > '*_probe' after a reported warning in an irqchip driver.
> > 
> > Turns out that was indeed an incorrect reference which has now been
> > fixed by commit 9b685058ca93 ("irqchip/qcom-irq-combiner: Fix section
> > mismatch").
> > 
> > A recently added clocksource driver also relies on this suffix to
> > suppress another valid warning, and that is being fixed separately. [1]
> > 
> > Note that drivers with valid reasons for suppressing the warnings can
> > use the __ref macros.
> > 
> > Link: https://lore.kernel.org/lkml/20251017054943.7195-1-johan@kernel.org/ [1]
> > Signed-off-by: Johan Hovold <johan@...nel.org>
> > ---
> > 
> > As mentioned above there are still two drivers relying on the "_probe"
> > pattern to suppress valid warnings so perhaps it's best to hold off on
> > merging this until the corresponding fixes are in mainline (e.g. next
> > cycle or so unless Thomas can fast-track them).
> 
> Yeah, if it were fast tracked as a fix for 6.18, we could either use
> that tag as the base for kbuild-next (as we have not take any patches
> for 6.19 yet) or if they are 6.19 material, Thomas could provide us with
> a signed tag or stable shared branch so that we could take this for 6.19
> and have a clean tree. Whatever works.

Daniel has queued the clocksource fix for 6.19 now so I guess we can
just wait until both fixes hit mainline and either send this one to
Linus after that for -rc1 (or -rc2), or just wait until 6.20.

I'll send a reminder when both are in Linus's tree.
 
> Reviewed-by: Nathan Chancellor <nathan@...nel.org>

Thanks for reviewing.

> >  scripts/mod/modpost.c | 2 +-
> >  1 file changed, 1 insertion(+), 1 deletion(-)
> > 
> > diff --git a/scripts/mod/modpost.c b/scripts/mod/modpost.c
> > index 47c8aa2a6939..5c499dace0bb 100644
> > --- a/scripts/mod/modpost.c
> > +++ b/scripts/mod/modpost.c
> > @@ -953,7 +953,7 @@ static int secref_whitelist(const char *fromsec, const char *fromsym,
> >  	/* symbols in data sections that may refer to any init/exit sections */
> >  	if (match(fromsec, PATTERNS(DATA_SECTIONS)) &&
> >  	    match(tosec, PATTERNS(ALL_INIT_SECTIONS, ALL_EXIT_SECTIONS)) &&
> > -	    match(fromsym, PATTERNS("*_ops", "*_probe", "*_console")))
> > +	    match(fromsym, PATTERNS("*_ops", "*_console")))
> >  		return 0;
> >  
> >  	/* Check for pattern 3 */
> > -- 
> > 2.49.1
> > 

Johan