Re: [PATCH] driver core: Disable late probes by default

[Tomeu Vizoso]

On 21 October 2015 at 05:39, Greg Kroah-Hartman
<gregkh@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> On Tue, Oct 20, 2015 at 06:17:39PM +0200, Tomeu Vizoso wrote:
>> On 20 October 2015 at 16:05, Greg Kroah-Hartman
>> <gregkh@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
>> > On Tue, Oct 20, 2015 at 09:40:48AM +0200, Tomeu Vizoso wrote:
>> >> On 19 October 2015 at 17:19, Greg Kroah-Hartman
>> >> <gregkh@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
>> >> > On Mon, Oct 19, 2015 at 05:13:22PM +0200, Tomeu Vizoso wrote:
>> >> >> To smooth the transition to late probes, make disabled the default for
>> >> >> DELAY_DEVICE_PROBES and let individual SoCs enable the option as they
>> >> >> get fixed.
>> >> >>
>> >> >> Signed-off-by: Tomeu Vizoso <tomeu.vizoso@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
>> >> >> Link: https://lkml.kernel.org/g/20151016181129.GA1764@xxxxxxxxxxxx
>> >> >>
>> >> >> ---
>> >> >>
>> >> >> Hi Rob,
>> >> >>
>> >> >> I'm sending this in case you think it would be best to leave the
>> >> >> on-demand probe series in -next for now but have late probes disabled to
>> >> >> avoid hassle to some people.
>> >> >
>> >> > I would like Rob to just drop this series please, I don't agree with it
>> >> > at all at the moment.
>> >>
>> >> Hi Greg,
>> >>
>> >> is it the case that you are satisfied with deferred probes as a way of
>> >> ordering device probing and that I should look at how to solve my
>> >> problem by improving it?
>> >
>> > Yes, especially given that you have said this does not speed up your
>> > boot times, which I thought was your main goal here :(
>>
>> Sorry if I'm repeating myself too often, but I have two goals: change
>> the probing order to not send deferred probes to the back of the queue
>> (getting the display up as fast as possible), and making easier to
>> understand the boot process on embedded platforms.
>>
>> The concrete issue that would be fixed by achieving the first goal was
>> explained in this email from last year:
>>
>> http://lists.freedesktop.org/archives/dri-devel/2014-August/066527.html
>>
>> Because of that, ChromeOS had to use their own bindings for the panel
>> node so that the panel probe wouldn't be deferred, introducing a
>> sizable delta that is a barrier to rebasing on newer mainline releases
>> and for vendors to upstream their HW adaptation for chrome devices.
>
> 1.5 second delay is crazy (again, my laptop boots to X in less time than
> that),

1.5 seconds isn't crazy at all for the kernel to initialize all the
devices in an embedded board. That's the current state of affairs
today.

> if there are a zillion probe deferrs, then maybe you can blame
> this type of system, but I would _strongly_ suggest fixing the broken
> driver that is causing such a delay instead, as that's the real problem
> here.
>
> And again, you say you did this to save boot time, yet you didn't
> actually test to see if you fixed this issue, sorry, but I need to see
> real numbers.

I haven't said that I did this to save boot time, but I do have
repeated several times that the goal is to get the display up as early
as possible during the boot process.

Again, the problem is that a device that defers its probe is currently
sent to the back of the queue, so it will be given a second chance
only after most other devices have been probed.

On a tegra124-nyan-big with multi_v7_defconfig I get this difference:

[    0.310032] [drm] Initialized tegra 0.0.0 20120330 on minor 0
[    2.038431] [drm] Initialized tegra 0.0.0 20120330 on minor 0

In the first case all devices required for display were probed near
the start, but in the second case one or more were put in the deferred
queue and were processed in late_initcall.

This is very much visible to the user, as with my series the panel
gets to display stuff very shortly after the bootloader cedes control,
but without it there's a long period with a black screen. This is
something that the people making products care about.

I hope I have been more clear this time, but just in case: I'm *not*
trying to speed up the boot process, I'm proposing a change in the
probing *order*.

Regards,

Tomeu

>> The goal of the project I'm working on is to help reduce the delta so
>> that ChromeOS (but will also help other downstreams) can rebase more
>> often and so that vendors have one excuse less to upstream support for
>> their SoCs in a timely way.
>
> That's great, and wonderful, and should be done, but again, find the
> broken driver here and fix it.  We have the tools to determine what is
> going wrong here, please use them.  Without that data, I'm going to
> insist that it is not the deferred probe logic (hint, how many probe
> functions can a processor make in 1.5 seconds?)
>
>> About simplifying the boot processes, I was really convinced that
>> people were as tired as me of debugging probing issues with deferred
>> probes in the middle and I'm very surprised that you and Russell don't
>> see any problem with it.
>
> I don't see the problems on the hardware that I run, and if there are
> problems, people don't tell me exactly what they are (hint, like what
> I'm asking for here...)
>
> thanks,
>
> greg k-h
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