Re: [PATCH] rtc: sun6i: Add NVMEM provider

[Samuel Holland]

On 4/30/21 4:02 AM, Maxime Ripard wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> On Sun, Apr 18, 2021 at 08:45:49PM -0500, Samuel Holland wrote:
>> The sun6i RTC provides 32 bytes of general-purpose data registers.
>> They can be used to save data in the always-on RTC power domain.
>> The registers are writable via 32-bit MMIO accesses only.
>>
>> Expose the region as a NVMEM provider so it can be used by userspace and
>> other drivers.
>>
>> Signed-off-by: Samuel Holland <samuel@xxxxxxxxxxxx>
> 
> As far as I understood, you want to use those registers to implement
> super-standby? If so, while it makes sense for the kernel to be able to
> be able to write to those registers, I guess it would be a bit unwise to
> allow the userspace to access it?

I want the user to be able to pass information to the bootloader (to
select a boot device, e.g. reboot to FEL). I also want the user to be
able to read data stored to these registers by system firmware (e.g.
crust writes exception information there). It's not really related to
standby.

I would want to stack a nvmem-reboot-mode on top to give friendlier
names to some of the numbers, but I don't see a problem with root having
direct access to the registers. It's no different from /dev/nvram
providing access to the PC CMOS RAM.

Regards,
Samuel