Re: [PATCH v2] PCI: rockchip: Avoid accessing PCIe registers with clocks gated

From: Robin Murphy
Date: Thu Jun 24 2021 - 19:19:01 EST


On 2021-06-24 22:57, Bjorn Helgaas wrote:
On Tue, Jun 08, 2021 at 10:04:09AM +0200, Javier Martinez Canillas wrote:
IRQ handlers that are registered for shared interrupts can be called at
any time after have been registered using the request_irq() function.

It's up to drivers to ensure that's always safe for these to be called.

Both the "pcie-sys" and "pcie-client" interrupts are shared, but since
their handlers are registered very early in the probe function, an error
later can lead to these handlers being executed before all the required
resources have been properly setup.

For example, the rockchip_pcie_read() function used by these IRQ handlers
expects that some PCIe clocks will already be enabled, otherwise trying
to access the PCIe registers causes the read to hang and never return.

The read *never* completes? That might be a bit problematic because
it implies that we may not be able to recover from PCIe errors. Most
controllers will timeout eventually, log an error, and either
fabricate some data (typically ~0) to complete the CPU's read or cause
some kind of abort or machine check.

Just asking in case there's some controller configuration that should
be tweaked.

If I'm following correctly, that'll be a read transaction to the native side of the controller itself; it can't complete that read, or do anything else either, because it's clock-gated, and thus completely oblivious (it might be that if another CPU was able to enable the clocks then everything would carry on as normal, or it might end up totally deadlocking the SoC interconnect). I think it's safe to assume that in that state nothing of importance would be happening on the PCIe side, and even if it was we'd never get to know about it.

The only relevant configuration would be "don't turn the clocks off if you're using the thing", which in actual operation can be taken for granted. It's a fairly typical bug to register an IRQ as shared but assume in the handler that you'll only ever be called for your own device's IRQ while it's powered up/clocked/etc. in its normal operational state, hence CONFIG_DEBUG_SHIRQ helps flush those kinds of unreliable assumptions out.

Robin.

(this reminds me of the "fun" I once had where a machine was locking up during boot, but simply connecting an external debugger to find out exactly where it was stuck happened to automatically enable the offending power domain and un-stick it)