Re: Linux 5.17-rc8

[Linus Torvalds]

On Mon, Mar 14, 2022 at 5:45 PM Marcelo Roberto Jimenez
<marcelo.jimenez@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
>
> At a certain point, I tried Thorsten's suggestion to add a gpio-ranges
> property in a way similar to another patch, but the kernel went into
> an EPROBE_DEFER deadlock. Thierry Reding made some comments about this
> in the sequence.

Hmm. The problem does sound like that particular driver doesn't use
the pin_ranges thing, so then the tests for an empty pin_ranges will
always be true.

The EPROBE_DEFER deadlock then sounds like something went wrong in the
gpio-ranges patch when you tried to fix it - but I don't actually find
that patch or that attempt, so I can't even guess at it.

This whole code pin_ranges code looks very odd:
gpiochip_add_pin{group}_range() seems to add the pin ranges properly,
but that actual gpiochip_add_pin_ranges() function does *not*.

It just expects that that the 'add_pin_ranges()' callback exists, and
if it doesn't, does nothing at all.

Which then makes those

        if (list_empty(&gc->gpiodev->pin_ranges))
                return 0;

tests very suspicious - because if some doesn't implement that
add_pin_ranges() callback, it looks like nothing at all ever gets
done, because nothing calls the function to actually add the pinrange.
And then that "list_empty()" test very much will trigger.

IOW, it looks like either a gpio controller has to implement that
'add_pin_ranges()' function (only tegra), or it needs to always add
the pin ranges at probe time.

Am I guessing right that the driver that you use does neither?

LinusW/Bartoz - this all really sounds strange to me. Maybe I'm
misreading the situation entirely. Should there be some sanity-test
that any gpio/pinctrl driver that uses gpiochip_generic_request()
would either have to have that add_pin_ranges() callback, or a
successful probe needs to always populate that 'gpiodev->pin_ranges'
list?

Or maybe I'm misreading the situation entirely. I don't know the code
- I'm just grepping for things and trying to make sense of how that
'->pin_ranges' list is supposed to work.

But for now, I think that patch has to be reverted.

               Linus