Re: [PATCH 4.4 08/56] ath10k: fix rfc1042 header retrieval in QCA4019 with eth decap mode

[Greg Kroah-Hartman]

On Thu, Jun 07, 2018 at 04:49:57PM +0100, Ben Hutchings wrote:
> On Thu, 2018-06-07 at 17:22 +0530, Sriram R wrote:
> > Hi Ben,
> > 
> > On 2018-06-04 23:22, Ben Hutchings wrote:
> > > On Mon, 2018-05-14 at 08:48 +0200, Greg Kroah-Hartman wrote:
> > > > 4.4-stable review patch.  If anyone has any objections, please let me 
> > > > know.
> > > > 
> > > > ------------------
> > > > 
> > > > From: Vasanthakumar Thiagarajan <vthiagar@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
> > > > 
> > > > commit 2f38c3c01de945234d23dd163e3528ccb413066d upstream.
> > > > 
> > > > Chipset from QCA99X0 onwards (QCA99X0, QCA9984, QCA4019 & future)
> > > > rx_hdr_status is not padded to align in 4-byte boundary. Define a
> > > > new hw_params field to handle different alignment behaviour between
> > > > different hw. This patch fixes improper retrieval of rfc1042 header
> > > > with QCA4019. This patch along with "ath10k: Properly remove padding
> > > > from the start of rx payload" will fix traffic failure in ethernet
> > > > decap mode for QCA4019.
> > > > 
> > > > Signed-off-by: Vasanthakumar Thiagarajan <vthiagar@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
> > > > Signed-off-by: Kalle Valo <kvalo@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
> > > > Signed-off-by: Sriram R <srirrama@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
> > > > Signed-off-by: Greg Kroah-Hartman <gregkh@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
> > > 
> > > [...]
> > > 
> > > I'm curious as to why this backport doesn't include the change to
> > > ath10k_htt_rx_h_find_rfc1042().  I understand that the addition of the
> > > new field is a dependency for the following patch, but shouldn't the
> > > fix included in the upstream commit also be applied to 4.4?
> > > 
> > 
> >    Our main intention with this patchset [1] was to provide fix for 
> > replay detection security issue seen in ath10k driver which needed to be 
> > in the stable releases.
> > 
> > And, as per stable tree guidelines we wanted the patchset to have only 
> > one and this important fix .
> 
> OK, I think the problem here is that the rules say "must" when what's
> really meant is "should".  So the rule "It must fix only one thing."
> really means that commits that each make a single logical change are
> strongly preferred.
> 
> It does not mean that upstream commits should be trimmed down to
> conform to this.  Greg generally considers it more important to avoid
> changes to the upstream commit, where possible.  Right, Greg?
> 
> And speaking only for myself, I particularly dislike stable backports
> that are significantly different from the original upstream commit but
> don't mention this difference in the commit message.

I _STRONGLY_ dislike backports that are different than what is in
Linus's tree and normally I catch it when someone tries to do that.  I
missed this one here, and that's not ok on my part for missing that, and
for the authors part in doing that :(

So, what to do here, should I revert this series and take a fixed-up
one?  What exactly is the stable tree now missing because of this
mistake?

thanks,

greg k-h