Re: [PATCH] pinctrl: mcp23s08: Disable all pin interrupts during probe

[Mike Looijmans]

On 07-04-2026 08:58, Linus Walleij wrote:
> On Mon, Mar 30, 2026 at 6:19 PM Francesco Lavra <flavra@xxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
>
> > A chip being probed may have the interrupt-on-change feature enabled on
> > some of its pins, for example after a reboot. This can cause the chip to
> > generate interrupts for pins that don't have a registered nested handler,
> > which leads to a kernel crash such as below:
> >
> > [    7.928897] Unable to handle kernel read from unreadable memory at virtual address 00000000000000ac
> > [    7.932314] Mem abort info:
> > [    7.935081]   ESR = 0x0000000096000004
> > [    7.938808]   EC = 0x25: DABT (current EL), IL = 32 bits
> > [    7.944094]   SET = 0, FnV = 0
> > [    7.947127]   EA = 0, S1PTW = 0
> > [    7.950247]   FSC = 0x04: level 0 translation fault
> > [    7.955101] Data abort info:
> > [    7.957961]   ISV = 0, ISS = 0x00000004, ISS2 = 0x00000000
> > [    7.963421]   CM = 0, WnR = 0, TnD = 0, TagAccess = 0
> > [    7.968447]   GCS = 0, Overlay = 0, DirtyBit = 0, Xs = 0
> > [    7.973734] user pgtable: 4k pages, 48-bit VAs, pgdp=00000000089b7000
> > [    7.980148] [00000000000000ac] pgd=0000000000000000, p4d=0000000000000000
> > [    7.986913] Internal error: Oops: 0000000096000004 [#1]  SMP
> > [    7.992545] Modules linked in:
> > [    8.073678] CPU: 0 UID: 0 PID: 81 Comm: irq/18-4-0025 Not tainted 7.0.0-rc6-gd2b5a1f931c8-dirty #199
> > [    8.073689] Hardware name: Khadas VIM3 (DT)
> > [    8.073692] pstate: 604000c5 (nZCv daIF +PAN -UAO -TCO -DIT -SSBS BTYPE=--)
> > [    8.094639] pc : _raw_spin_lock_irq+0x40/0x80
> > [    8.098970] lr : handle_nested_irq+0x2c/0x168
> > [    8.098979] sp : ffff800082b2bd20
> > [    8.106599] x29: ffff800082b2bd20 x28: ffff800080107920 x27: ffff800080104d88
> > [    8.106611] x26: ffff000003298080 x25: 0000000000000001 x24: 000000000000ff00
> > [    8.113707] x23: 0000000000000001 x22: 0000000000000000 x21: 000000000000000e
> > [    8.120850] x20: 0000000000000000 x19: 00000000000000ac x18: 0000000000000000
> > [    8.135046] x17: 0000000000000000 x16: 0000000000000000 x15: 0000000000000000
> > [    8.135062] x14: ffff800081567ea8 x13: ffffffffffffffff x12: 0000000000000000
> > [    8.135070] x11: 00000000000000c0 x10: 0000000000000b60 x9 : ffff800080109e0c
> > [    8.135078] x8 : 1fffe0000069dbc1 x7 : 0000000000000001 x6 : ffff0000034ede00
> > [    8.135086] x5 : 0000000000000000 x4 : ffff0000034ede08 x3 : 0000000000000001
> > [    8.163460] x2 : 0000000000000000 x1 : 0000000000000001 x0 : 00000000000000ac
> > [    8.170560] Call trace:
> > [    8.180094]  _raw_spin_lock_irq+0x40/0x80 (P)
> > [    8.184443]  mcp23s08_irq+0x248/0x358
> > [    8.184462]  irq_thread_fn+0x34/0xb8
> > [    8.184470]  irq_thread+0x1a4/0x310
> > [    8.195093]  kthread+0x13c/0x150
> > [    8.198309]  ret_from_fork+0x10/0x20
> > [    8.201850] Code: d65f03c0 d2800002 52800023 f9800011 (885ffc01)
> > [    8.207931] ---[ end trace 0000000000000000 ]---
> >
> > This issue has always been present, but has been latent until commit
> > "f9f4fda15e72" ("pinctrl: mcp23s08: init reg_defaults from HW at probe and
> > switch cache type"), which correctly removed reg_defaults from the regmap
> > and as a side effect changed the behavior of the interrupt handler so that
> > the real value of the MCP_GPINTEN register is now being read from the chip
> > instead of using a bogus 0 default value; a non-zero value for this
> > register can trigger the invocation of a nested handler which may not exist
> > (yet).
> > Fix this issue by disabling all pin interrupts during initialization.
> >
> > Fixes: "f9f4fda15e72" ("pinctrl: mcp23s08: init reg_defaults from HW at probe and switch cache type")
> > Signed-off-by: Francesco Lavra <flavra@xxxxxxxxxxxx>
> Patch applied for fixes since it's pretty urgent, and it also looks
> right to me.
>
> However added some people using this to the CC so they
> get a chance to react before it goes upstream.
Looks okay to me too.

Maybe it'd be better to unconditionally write "0" to this register? No 
need to exercise the interrupt logic and pins when no-one is listening...

I was going to say "if the device doesn't have a reset GPIO", but 
looking at the code, the reset GPIO is never asserted by this driver.


--
Mike Looijmans
System Expert

TOPIC Embedded Products B.V.
Materiaalweg 4, 5681 RJ Best
The Netherlands

T: +31 (0) 499 33 69 69
E: mike.looijmans@xxxxxxxx
W: www.topic.nl