Re: [RFC PATCH 8/9] surface_aggregator: Add DebugFS interface

From: Maximilian Luz
Date: Wed Sep 23 2020 - 14:29:24 EST


On 9/23/20 6:48 PM, Arnd Bergmann wrote:
Versioned interfaces are basically always a mess, try to avoid them. I'd much
rather see this done in one of two ways:

a) make it a proper documented interface, in this case probably a misc
character device, and then maintain the interface forever, without
breaking compatibility with existing users.

b) keep it as a debugfs file, but don't even pretend for it
to be a documented interface. Anything using it should know
what they are doing and have a matching user space.

I'll drop the version. I'd still very much like to keep the
documentation as well as keeping this a debugfs file. I hope that I've
made it clear enough in the documentation that it's not intended for use
by anything other than debugging, reverse-engineering, prototyping and
the likes. Especially as having that in debugfs should IMHO give the
impression: "If you rely on it and it breaks, it's not my fault", which
is very much what I want to stick by for now.

Thus I'm not really in favor of making it a "public" device, at least
not yet. This may make sense in case we ever have a concrete need for
user space applications communicating with the EC directly, although I'd
like to structure and commit to that interface once there is such.

+/**
+ * struct ssam_debug_request - Controller request IOCTL argument.
+ * @target_category: Target category of the SAM request.
+ * @target_id: Target ID of the SAM request.
+ * @command_id: Command ID of the SAM request.
+ * @instance_id: Instance ID of the SAM request.
+ * @flags: SAM Request flags.
+ * @status: Request status (output).
+ * @payload: Request payload (input data).
+ * @payload.data: Pointer to request payload data.
+ * @payload.length: Length of request payload data (in bytes).
+ * @response: Request response (output data).
+ * @response.data: Pointer to response buffer.
+ * @response.length: On input: Capacity of response buffer (in bytes).
+ * On output: Length of request response (number of bytes
+ * in the buffer that are actually used).
+ */
+struct ssam_dbg_request {
+ __u8 target_category;
+ __u8 target_id;
+ __u8 command_id;
+ __u8 instance_id;
+ __u16 flags;
+ __s16 status;
+
+ struct {
+ const __u8 __user *data;
+ __u16 length;
+ __u8 __pad[6];
+ } payload;
+
+ struct {
+ __u8 __user *data;
+ __u16 length;
+ __u8 __pad[6];
+ } response;
+};

Binary interfaces are hard. In this case the indirect pointers mean that
32-bit user space has an incompatible layout, which you should not do.

Also, having an ioctl on a debugfs file is a bit odd. I wonder if you
could have this as a transactional file that performs only read/write
commands, i.e. you pass in a

struct ssam_dbg_request {
__u8 target_category;
__u8 target_id;
__u8 command_id;
__u8 instance_id;
__u16 flags;
__u8 payload[]; /* variable-length */
};

and you get out a

struct ssam_dbg_response {
__s16 status;
__u8 payload[];
};

and keep the rest unchanged. See fs/libfs.c for how this could be done
with simple_transaction files.

Thanks! Is there a way to make this compatible with a 32-bit user space?
From a quick search, compat_ptr and compat_uptr_t would be the right way
to transfer pointer?

I've already laid out my main two rationales for using an IOCTL in the
reply to Greg, but here's an overview: First, IOCTLs allow me to execute
requests in parallel with only a single open file descriptor, and
without having to care about allocating buffers for the responses and
waiting until the buffer is read (yes, arguably I still have to manage
buffers, but only in the IOCTL function which I consider a bit more
manageable). I was previously unaware of the simple_transaction helpers
though, so thanks for that pointer! Second, I can easily expand that
interface to handle events sent by the EC, by having the user space
application read from that file. Although that could be moved to a
second file. I just felt having that option of keeping in one would
eventually result in a cleaner interface.

Thanks,
Max