[PATCH 0/3] ata: Module parameter clean-ups for pata_legacy and pata_platform

From: Maciej W. Rozycki
Date: Sun Mar 21 2021 - 15:59:46 EST


Hi,

In the course of looking into Christoph's recent proposal to drop legacy
IDE drivers I have come across a number of issues with module parameters
of the pata_legacy and pata_platform drivers: errors in documentation
present in the comment form, missing user-visible documentation, and
unconditional poking at ISA I/O ports in pata_legacy that isn't there with
the old ide-generic driver (the lack of `probe_mask' parameter).

Here's a small patch series that addresses these issues. Overall I
find the design of the pata_legacy driver's options a bit messy, e.g. the
`all' vs the `probe_all' parameter, and the interpretation of masks where
bits correspond to probed PATA locations in a particular system (rather
than either all known or all existing), but it's been there long enough I
think we have to keep it, so I merely tried to describe the current
semantics. See the individual change descriptions for details.

The changes have been run-time verified with an EISA system and a single
ISA PATA adapter at the usual primary I/O location. They have also been
verified (mainly for the correctness of MODULE_PARM_DESC use) with an
x86/PC build (for pata_legacy) and a MIPS/SWARM build (for pata_platform).

Please apply.

Maciej