Re: [Patch 1/1] x86 pci: Add option to not assign BAR's if not already assigned

[Bjorn Helgaas]

On Wednesday, June 02, 2010 09:53:23 am Mike Habeck wrote:
> Bjorn Helgaas wrote:
> > I'm still having trouble reconciling the stated purpose, i.e., the
> > changelog, with the behavior.  The changelog implies that the patch
> > is required to make >16 devices with I/O BARs work at all, but per
> > Mike Habeck, the patch just gets rid of some warnings and maybe helps
> > with hot-add of devices using I/O space.
> 
> greaterthan 16 devices will still work if the BIOS doesn't assign
> the I/O BARs and the kernel does (including the devices that don't
> get assigned due to the kernel running out of I/O Port resources).
> And when the kernel runs out of I/O Port space it will warn for
> those devices it couldn't assign: (example):
> 
>    pci 0002:03:00.0: BAR 5: can't allocate I/O resource [0x0-0x7f]

[For anybody else grepping for this message, it is now "can't assign",
not "can't allocate".]

> But if the kernel assigns all the I/O Port space to these devices
> we know don't need it (thus the reason the BIOS didn't assign it)
> then I believe hot-add of devices using I/O space will fail.

Yes, I understand and agree with this motivation, though I hope
"pci=nobar" is recognized as only a short-term workaround.  I think
it's completely unacceptable in terms of the user experience.  Using
DMI quirks to turn it on automatically removes some user pain, but
it's not a real solution and still leaves a maintenance problem.

How about if we write a changelog that mentions hot-add of devices
that need I/O space?  :-)

> There is also the issue that quirk_system_pci_resources() thinks
> those unassigned I/O resources are using I/O port space 0x0-0xFF.
> Since the BIOS never assigned the BAR the kernel reads it as
> having a base of 0x0 and a limit of whatever the BAR size is when
> it writes all 1's to obtain the size.  So that results in
> quirk_system_pci_resources() disabling pnp devices: (example):
> 
>    pnp 00:11: io resource (0x92-0x92) overlaps 0002:03:00.0 BAR 0 (0x0-0xff), disabling
[...]
> 
> One could argue this is a quirk_system_pci_resources() issue and
> should be handled there rather than "zeroing out the resource if
> the bios didn't assign it" as the patch does, but what the patch
> is attempting to do (as stated above) is to allow the BIOS a way
> to not assign resources it knows are not needed and thus make sure
> the kernel doesn't override that... and in doing that the quirk
> issue goes away too.

This is definitely a problem, but I think it should be handled
separately.  The fact that this patch makes the "overlap" messages
go away is a nice coincidence, but it doesn't fix the underlying
issue.

I think setting the resource start/end to zero to "disable" it as in
this patch (and elsewhere) is just a hack -- we no longer know the size
of the BAR, the struct resource no longer corresponds to the BAR contents,
and I don't think we do anything with the PCI_COMMAND_IO/PCI_COMMAND_MEM
bits to actually disable the BAR, so the device probably still responds
at whatever we left in the BAR.

In quirk_system_pci_resources(), we set IORESOURCE_DISABLED rather than
setting the PNP resource start/end to zero, but that's a bit of a hack,
too.  All that does is prevent the PNP motherboard driver (pnp/system.c)
from requesting that region.  We don't actually do anything to stop the
device from responding to that address.

Bjorn
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