Re: [PATCH v2 08/12] macintosh/via-pmu68k: Don't load driver on unsupported hardware

[Michael Schmitz]

Hi Ben,

I'm glad Finn is caring enough to keep this 20 year old bike shed in
good repair, but this may be overdoing it a little indeed. My bad.

A comment on the V1 PMU entry everyone should be OK with, I hope.

Cheers,

  Michael



On Mon, Jun 11, 2018 at 12:05 PM, Benjamin Herrenschmidt
<benh@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> On Sun, 2018-06-10 at 21:12 +1200, Michael Schmitz wrote:
>> Hi Geert,
>
> Top posting, sorry ...
>
> We are painting that bike shed with way too many coats..
>
> We can keep the existing definitions, stick a comment on them stating
> "obsolete" and use new number if/when needed.
>
> Ben.
>
>
>> Am 10.06.2018 um 20:29 schrieb Geert Uytterhoeven:
>> > Hi Finn,
>> >
>> > On Sat, Jun 9, 2018 at 2:20 PM Finn Thain <fthain@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
>> > > > > > Is this enum used by any user space code? If so, perhaps rather
>> > > > > > leave the PMU_68K_V1 in there to avoid upsetting that?
>> > > > >
>> > > > > It also changes the value of PMU_68K_V2, which is an ABI break.
>> > > >
>> > > > Yes, that's what I worry about - but do we know of any users of that
>> > > > particular interface?
>> > >
>> > > There is no ABI issue AFAIK. The value of pmu_kind is visible to userland
>> > > only on powerpc. /dev/pmu and /proc/pmu/* do not exist on m68k. This patch
>> > > series will make these UAPIs available on m68k, and for that reason I've
>> > > chosen the value PMU_UNKNOWN for pmu_kind.
>> >
>> > While /dev/pmu and /proc/pmu/* may not exist on m68k, definitions in
>> > include/uapi/linux/pmu.h are part of the ABI, and cannot be changed or removed,
>> > unless we are 100% sure there are no users.
>> >
>> > If I would write a program interfacing with /dev/pmu and /proc/pmu/*, and
>> > needing to check the PMU type, it would have a switch() statement with
>> > all existing values defined in <linux/pmu.h>. So that would become broken
>> > by your change.
>> >
>> > Hence the enum is append-only.
>>
>> The PMU type from pmu.h was never exposed to user space on m68k via
>> /proc/pmu/*, and /dev/pmu is used for ioctls to the PMU driver on
>> powerpc only (the 68k PMU driver doesn't have ioctl support). No way
>> that I can see for user space to make use of the PMU type definition
>> from pmu.h, so I suppose we can be sure there are no users.
>>
>> The m68k PMU types cannot be said to be exposed on powerpc either (which
>> has ioctl support to interrogate the PMU type), as these only return
>> values up to PMU_KEYLARGO_BASED.
>>
>> Applications like pbbuttonsd or pmud don't use the kernel PMU type at
>> all, but go straight to the PMU via the ADB bus to interrogate the
>> hardware type, so won't be affected either.
>>
>> Is there any other way besides procfs and ioctl for user space to
>> interrogate the PMU type that I'm missing here?
>>
>> (I understand that breaking the ABI should not be done as a rule, but
>> this may be a case where we can successfully argue the definitions were
>> never in use, so the rules may be bent a little).