Re: [PATCH 4/5] driver core: inhibit automatic driver binding on reserved devices

From: Patrick Williams
Date: Mon Oct 25 2021 - 09:20:16 EST


On Mon, Oct 25, 2021 at 03:58:25PM +0300, Andy Shevchenko wrote:
> On Mon, Oct 25, 2021 at 06:44:26AM -0500, Patrick Williams wrote:
> > On Mon, Oct 25, 2021 at 08:15:41AM +0200, Greg Kroah-Hartman wrote:
> > > On Mon, Oct 25, 2021 at 12:38:08AM -0500, Frank Rowand wrote:
> > > > On 10/23/21 3:56 AM, Greg Kroah-Hartman wrote:
> >
> > > We have the bind/unbind ability today, from userspace, that can control
> > > this. Why not just have Linux grab the device when it boots, and then
> > > when userspace wants to "give the device up", it writes to "unbind" in
> > > sysfs, and then when all is done, it writes to the "bind" file and then
> > > Linux takes back over.
> > >
> > > Unless for some reason Linux should _not_ grab the device when booting,
> > > then things get messier, as we have seen in this thread.
> >
> > This is probably more typical on a BMC than atypical. The systems often require
> > the BMC (running Linux) to be able to reboot independently from the managed host
> > (running anything). In the example Zev gave, the BMC rebooting would rip away
> > the BIOS chip from the running host.
> >
> > The BMC almost always needs to come up in a "I don't know what could possibly be
> > going on in the system" state and re-discover where the system was left off.
>
> Isn't it an architectural issue then?

I'm not sure what "it" you are referring to here.

I was trying to explain why starting in "bind" state is not a good idea for a
BMC in most of these cases where we want to be able to dynamically add a device.


--
Patrick Williams

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