Re: [PATCH v4 01/10] PCI: Avoid saving error values for config space

From: Farhan Ali

Date: Mon Oct 06 2025 - 17:35:59 EST



On 10/6/2025 12:26 PM, Lukas Wunner wrote:
On Mon, Oct 06, 2025 at 10:54:51AM -0700, Farhan Ali wrote:
On 10/4/2025 7:54 AM, Lukas Wunner wrote:
I believe this also makes patch [01/10] in your series unnecessary.
I tested your patches + patches 2-10 of this series. It unfortunately didn't
completely help with the s390x use case. We still need the check to in
pci_save_state() from this patch to make sure we are not saving error
values, which can be written back to the device in pci_restore_state().
What's the caller of pci_save_state() that needs this?

Can you move the check for PCI_POSSIBLE_ERROR() to the caller?
I think plenty of other callers don't need this, so it adds
extra overhead for them and down the road it'll be difficult
to untangle which caller needs it and which doesn't.

The caller would be pci_dev_save_and_disable(). Are you suggesting moving the PCI_POSSIBLE_ERROR() prior to calling pci_save_state()?


As part of the error recovery userspace can use the VFIO_DEVICE_RESET to
reset the device (pci_try_reset_function()). The function call for this is:

pci_dev_save_and_disable <https://elixir.bootlin.com/linux/v6.17.1/C/ident/pci_dev_save_and_disable>();

__pci_reset_function_locked <https://elixir.bootlin.com/linux/v6.17.1/C/ident/__pci_reset_function_locked>();

pci_dev_restore
<https://elixir.bootlin.com/linux/v6.17.1/C/ident/pci_dev_restore>();

So we can end up overwriting the initial saved state (added by you in
pci_bus_add_device()). Do we need to update the pci_dev_save_and_disable()
not to save the state?
The state saved on device addition is just the initial state and
it is fine if later on it gets updated (which is a nicer term than
"overwritten"). E.g. when portdrv.c instantiates port services
and drivers are bound to them, various registers in Config Space
are changed, hence pcie_portdrv_probe() calls pci_save_state()
again.

However we can discuss whether pci_save_state() is still needed
in pci_dev_save_and_disable().

The commit 8dd7f8036c12 ("PCI: add support for function level reset") introduced the logic of saving/restoring the device state after an FLR. My assumption is it was done to save the most recent state of the device (as the state could be updated by drivers). So I think it would still make sense to save the device state in pci_dev_save_and_disable() if the Config Space is still accessible?

Thanks

Farhan