Re: [PATCH] tty: amba-pl011: Make TX optimisation conditional

[Rogier Wolff]

On Fri, Jul 12, 2019 at 12:21:05PM +0100, Dave Martin wrote:
> diff --git a/drivers/tty/serial/amba-pl011.c b/drivers/tty/serial/amba-pl011.c
> index 89ade21..1902071 100644
> --- a/drivers/tty/serial/amba-pl011.c
> +++ b/drivers/tty/serial/amba-pl011.c
> @@ -1307,6 +1307,13 @@ static bool pl011_tx_chars(struct uart_amba_port *uap, bool from_irq);
>  /* Start TX with programmed I/O only (no DMA) */
>  static void pl011_start_tx_pio(struct uart_amba_port *uap)
>  {
> +	/*
> +	 * Avoid FIFO overfills if the TX IRQ is active:
> +	 * pl011_int() will comsume chars waiting in the xmit queue anyway.
> +	 */
> +	if (uap->im & UART011_TXIM)
> +		return;
> +

I'm no expert on PL011, have no knowledge of the current bug, but have
programmed serial drivers in the past.

This looks "dangerous" to me.

The normal situation is that you push the first few characters into
the FIFO with PIO and then the interrupt will trigger once the FIFO
empties and then you can refil the FIFO until the buffer empties.

The danger in THIS fix is that you might have a race that causes those
first few PIO-ed characters not to be put in the hardware resulting in
the interrupt never triggering.... If you can software-trigger the
interrupt just before the "return" here that'd be a way to fix things.

I'm ok with a reaction like "I've thought about this, it's not a
problem, now shut up".

	Roger. 

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