Re: [PATCH 4/4] block: Integrity profile init function to trigger module loads

[Martin K. Petersen]

Hi Ard,

>> However, since the dependency for "crc10dif" is already satisfied,
>> nothing is going to cause the hardware-accelerated kernel modules to
>> get loaded.
>
> This is not true. All accelerated implementations based on SIMD
> polynomial multiplication are tried to the respective CPU features
> bits. This applies to x86, power, ARM and arm64.
>
> E.g., for x86 you have
>
> alias:          cpu:type:x86,ven*fam*mod*:feature:*0081*
>
> which will be matched by udev if /sys/devices/system/cpu/modalias
> contains feature 0081, and so the modules will be loaded automatically
> at boot.

If I can avoid carrying that init callback in the block integrity code
that will definitely make me happy. However, loading crct10dif-pclmul
does not happen automatically for me. crc-t10dif is linked statically
and every user of the CRC goes through that library. So nothing ever
requests the "crct10dif" modalias and no accelerator modules are loaded.

<fresh boot>

# lsmod | grep crc
crc32c_intel           24576  0
crc_ccitt              16384  1 ipv6

# modinfo crc32c_intel | grep cpu:type
alias:          cpu:type:x86,ven*fam*mod*:feature:*0094*

# modinfo crct10dif-pclmul | grep cpu:type
alias:          cpu:type:x86,ven*fam*mod*:feature:*0081*

# egrep -o "0081|0094" /sys/devices/system/cpu/modalias
0081
0094

# modprobe crct10dif
# lsmod | grep crc
crct10dif_pclmul       16384  1
crc32c_intel           24576  0
crc_ccitt              16384  1 ipv6

It's interesting that crc32c_intel is loaded but libcrc32c is not. That
matches your description of how things should work. But crct10dif-pclmul
isn't loaded and neither is crc32_pclmul:

# modprobe crc32
# lsmod | grep crc
crc32_generic          16384  0
crc32_pclmul           16384  0
crc32c_intel           24576  0
crc_ccitt              16384  1 ipv6

-- 
Martin K. Petersen	Oracle Linux Engineering