Re: [PATCH 0/2] Move uart_register_driver call to device probe for pl010 and sh-sci

[Greg Kroah-Hartman]

On Sun, Mar 26, 2017 at 11:22:57AM +0200, Geert Uytterhoeven wrote:
> Hi Russell, Sjoerd,
> 
> On Fri, Mar 24, 2017 at 5:42 PM, Russell King - ARM Linux
> <linux@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> > On Fri, Mar 24, 2017 at 05:26:32PM +0100, Sjoerd Simons wrote:
> >> When testing on a Renesas board with the PL010 serial driver enabled
> >> serial output broke. Turns out the minor device numbers for both
> >> drivers happen to overlap, causing whichever driver happened to be the
> >> second one to register to fail.
> >
> > How the **** has the SH serial driver ended up with overlapping device
> > numbers?
> 
> Interesting...
> 
> > What happened to our maintained list of allocated major/minor device
> > numbers, which is supposed to stop crap like this happening?
> 
> AMBA PL010 has been assigned major 204, minors 16..31,
> SCI has been assigned major 204, minors 8..11.
> 
> Over the years, Renesas SoCs have been gaining more and more serial
> ports, leading to
> 
>     #define SCI_NPORTS CONFIG_SERIAL_SH_SCI_NR_UARTS
> 
> with CONFIG_SERIAL_SH_SCI_NR_UARTS=20 in shmobile_defconfig and
> multi_v7_defconfig (although the maximum value on any supported SoC is 18).
> 
> But once the value becomes 5 or more, it starts overflowing into the ttyFWx
> and ttyAMx space.
> 
> How to solve this?
> Time for the serial subsystem to switch to dynamic minors, and get rid of the
> what-is-your-serial-port-called-again-on-this-platform
> multi-million-euro question?

Yes, please, we need to do that.  Let's provide a build option for it,
like USB has had for over a decade.  If it's enabled, it's all dynamic,
if not, the "old style" ones are used.  Then we don't accept any new
reservations, making new drivers use the dynamic number, and over a long
time, all should be good.

thanks,

greg k-h