netdev - Re: devlink interface for asynchronous event/messages from firmware?

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Date:   Wed, 20 May 2020 17:16:55 -0700
From:   Jakub Kicinski <kuba@...nel.org>
To:     Jacob Keller <jacob.e.keller@...el.com>
Cc:     Jiri Pirko <jiri@...nulli.us>,
        "netdev@...r.kernel.org" <netdev@...r.kernel.org>
Subject: Re: devlink interface for asynchronous event/messages from
 firmware?

On Wed, 20 May 2020 17:03:02 -0700 Jacob Keller wrote:
> Hi Jiri, Jakub,
> 
> I've been asked to investigate using devlink as a mechanism for
> reporting asynchronous events/messages from firmware including
> diagnostic messages, etc.
> 
> Essentially, the ice firmware can report various status or diagnostic
> messages which are useful for debugging internal behavior. We want to be
> able to get these messages (and relevant data associated with them) in a
> format beyond just "dump it to the dmesg buffer and recover it later".
> 
> It seems like this would be an appropriate use of devlink. I thought
> maybe this would work with devlink health:
> 
> i.e. we create a devlink health reporter, and then when firmware sends a
> message, we use devlink_health_report.
> 
> But when I dug into this, it doesn't seem like a natural fit. The health
> reporters expect to see an "error" state, and don't seem to really fit
> the notion of "log a message from firmware" notion.
> 
> One of the issues is that the health reporter only keeps one dump, when
> what we really want is a way to have a monitoring application get the
> dump and then store its contents.
> 
> Thoughts on what might make sense for this? It feels like a stretch of
> the health interface...
> 
> I mean basically what I am thinking of having is using the devlink_fmsg
> interface to just send a netlink message that then gets sent over the
> devlink monitor socket and gets dumped immediately.

Why does user space need a raw firmware interface in the first place?

Examples?