Re: [PATCH v2 1/2] random: move add_hwgenerator_randomness()'s wait outside function

[Jason A. Donenfeld]

On Mon, Sep 19, 2022 at 5:03 PM Sven van Ashbrook <svenva@xxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
>
> On Fri, Sep 16, 2022 at 10:51 AM Jason A. Donenfeld <Jason@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> >
> > The other thing that occurred to me when reading this patch in context
> > of the other one is that this sleep you're removing here is not the
> > only sleep in the call chain. Each hwrng driver can also sleep, and
> > many do, sometimes for a long time, blocking until there's data
> > available, which might happen after minutes in some cases. So maybe
> > that's something to think about in context of this patchset -- that
> > just moving this to a delayed worker might not actually fix the issue
> > you're having with sleeps.
> >
>
> This is an excellent point. A look at tpm2_calc_ordinal_duration()
> reveals that tpm_transmit() may block for 300s at a time. So when
> we are using a WQ_FREEZABLE delayed_work, the PM may have to wait
> for up to 300s when draining the wq on suspend. That will introduce
> a lot of breakage in suspend/resume.
>
> Dominik: in light of this, please proceed with your patch, without
> rebasing it onto mine.
>
> + tpm maintainers Peter Huewe and Jarkko Sakkinen, a quick recap of
> the problem:
>
> - on ChromeOS we are seeing intermittent suspend/resume errors+warnings
>   related to activity of the core's hwrng_fillfn. this kthread keeps
>   runningduring suspend/resume. if this happens to kick off an bus (i2c)
>   transaction while the bus driver is in suspend, this triggers
>   a "Transfer while suspended" warning from the i2c core, followed by
>   an error return:
>
> i2c_designware i2c_designware.1: Transfer while suspended
> tpm tpm0: i2c transfer failed (attempt 1/3): -108
> [ snip 10s of transfer failed attempts]
>
> - in 2019, Stephen Boyd made an attempt at fixing this by making the
>   hwrng_fillfn kthread freezable. But a freezable thread requires
>   different API calls for scheduling, waiting, and timeout. This
>   generated regressions, so the solution had to be reverted.
>
> https://patchwork.kernel.org/project/linux-crypto/patch/20190805233241.220521-1-swboyd@xxxxxxxxxxxx/
>
> - the current patch attempts to halt hwrng_fillfn during suspend by
>   converting it to a self-rearming delayed_work. The PM drains all
>   work before going into suspend. But, the potential minute-long
>   blocking delays in tpm make this solution infeasible.
>
> Peter and Jarkko, can you think of a possible way forward to eliminate
> the warnings+errors?
>
> -Sven


By the way, there was a recent ath9k patch that kind of went to a
similar tune. The solution was to make ath9k's hwrng driver sleep
using a hwrng-specific sleep function that allowed the core framework
to cancel that sleep. Maybe that's a potential solution here, or
something similar to it. Might be worth taking a look at that patch. I
think it's in one of Herbert's trees.

Jason