Re: [PATCH v7 04/10] drivers: qcom: rpmh: add RPMH helper functions

[Doug Anderson]

Hi,

On Wed, May 2, 2018 at 12:37 PM, Lina Iyer <ilina@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> +static struct rpmh_ctrlr rpmh_rsc[RPMH_MAX_CTRLR];
> +static DEFINE_SPINLOCK(rpmh_rsc_lock);
> +
> +static struct rpmh_ctrlr *get_rpmh_ctrlr(const struct device *dev)
> +{
> +       int i;
> +       struct rsc_drv *p, *drv = dev_get_drvdata(dev->parent);
> +       struct rpmh_ctrlr *ctrlr = ERR_PTR(-EINVAL);
> +       unsigned long flags;
> +
> +       if (!drv)
> +               return ctrlr;
> +
> +       for (i = 0; i < RPMH_MAX_CTRLR; i++) {
> +               if (rpmh_rsc[i].drv == drv) {
> +                       ctrlr = &rpmh_rsc[i];
> +                       return ctrlr;
> +               }
> +       }
> +
> +       spin_lock_irqsave(&rpmh_rsc_lock, flags);
> +       list_for_each_entry(p, &rsc_drv_list, list) {
> +               if (drv == p) {
> +                       for (i = 0; i < RPMH_MAX_CTRLR; i++) {
> +                               if (!rpmh_rsc[i].drv)
> +                                       break;
> +                       }
> +                       if (i == RPMH_MAX_CTRLR) {
> +                               ctrlr = ERR_PTR(-ENOMEM);
> +                               break;
> +                       }
> +                       rpmh_rsc[i].drv = drv;
> +                       ctrlr = &rpmh_rsc[i];
> +                       break;
> +               }
> +       }
> +       spin_unlock_irqrestore(&rpmh_rsc_lock, flags);

I may have missed something, but to me it appears that this whole
"rsc_drv_list" is pretty pointless.  I wrote up a patch atop your
series to remove it at
<https://chromium-review.googlesource.com/c/chromiumos/third_party/kernel/+/1042883/>
and it simplifies the code a whole bunch.  From that patch, my
justification was:

> The global rsc_drv_list was (as far as I can tell) racy and not useful
> for anything.
>
> I say it is racy because in general you need some sort of mutual
> exclusion for lists.  If someone is adding to a list while someone
> else is iterating over it then you get badness.
>
> I say it is not useful because the only user of it was
> get_rpmh_ctrlr() and the only thing it did was to verify that the
> "struct rsc_drv *" that it alrady had was in the list.  How could it
> not be?

Note that in v7 of your series you added a spinlock around your access
of "rsc_drv_list", but this doesn't actually remove the race.
Specifically I'm pretty sure that the list primitives don't support
calling list_add() while someone might be iterating over the list and
your spinlock isn't grabbed in rpmh_rsc_probe().

Note that I also say in my patch:

> NOTE: After this patch get_rpmh_ctrlr() still seems a bit fishy.  I'm
> not sure why every caller would need its own private global cache of
> stuff.  ...but I left that part alone.

I'll try to dig into this more so I could just be confused, but in
general it seems really odd to have a spinlock and something called a
"cache" at this level.  If we need some sort of mutual exclusion or
caching it seems like it should be stored in memory directly
associated with the RPMh device, not some external global.


-Doug