Re: [PATCH 2/3] dt-bindings: regulator: Add regulator-output bindingg
From: Zev Weiss
Date: Fri Oct 28 2022 - 00:15:29 EST
On Thu, Oct 27, 2022 at 06:22:10PM PDT, Krzysztof Kozlowski wrote:
On 27/10/2022 14:42, Zev Weiss wrote:
On Thu, Sep 29, 2022 at 02:27:20PM PDT, Zev Weiss wrote:
On Thu, Sep 29, 2022 at 02:07:14PM PDT, Rob Herring wrote:
On Sun, Sep 25, 2022 at 03:03:18PM -0700, Zev Weiss wrote:
This describes a power output supplied by a regulator, such as a
power outlet on a power distribution unit (PDU).
Signed-off-by: Zev Weiss <zev@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
---
.../bindings/regulator/regulator-output.yaml | 47 +++++++++++++++++++
1 file changed, 47 insertions(+)
create mode 100644 Documentation/devicetree/bindings/regulator/regulator-output.yaml
diff --git a/Documentation/devicetree/bindings/regulator/regulator-output.yaml b/Documentation/devicetree/bindings/regulator/regulator-output.yaml
new file mode 100644
index 000000000000..40953ec48e9e
--- /dev/null
+++ b/Documentation/devicetree/bindings/regulator/regulator-output.yaml
@@ -0,0 +1,47 @@
+# SPDX-License-Identifier: (GPL-2.0-only OR BSD-2-Clause)
+%YAML 1.2
+---
+
+$id: http://devicetree.org/schemas/regulator/regulator-output.yaml#
+$schema: http://devicetree.org/meta-schemas/core.yaml#
+
+title: Regulator output connector
+
+maintainers:
+ - Zev Weiss <zev@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
+
+description: |
+ This describes a power output connector supplied by a regulator,
+ such as a power outlet on a power distribution unit (PDU). The
+ connector may be standalone or merely one channel or set of pins
+ within a ganged physical connector carrying multiple independent
+ power outputs.
+
+properties:
+ compatible:
+ const: regulator-output
+
+ vout-supply:
+ description:
+ Phandle of the regulator supplying the output.
+
+ regulator-leave-on:
+ description: |
+ If the regulator is enabled when software relinquishes control
+ of it (such as when shutting down) it should be left enabled
+ instead of being turned off.
+ type: boolean
I'm not too sure about this one as there could be various times when
control is relinquished. It is userspace closing its access?
driver unbind? module unload? Does a bootloader pay attention to this?
Rob
Thanks for the feedback, Rob -- I'll admit I was a bit unsure how to
approach that, and this may well not be the right answer. What I'm
really aiming for is an appropriate way to express that regulator
on/off state should only ever be changed by explicit (external, e.g.
userspace) request, never as any sort of default/automatic action.
The two obvious things to guard against there seem to be automatic
enablement during initialization and automatic disablement on de-init
(shutdown, unbind, etc.). The former I think can be avoided by simply
not setting regulator-boot-on, so I added this as a corresponding
property to avoid the latter.
I'm definitely open to suggestions for a better approach though.
Ping...
Would something like this be preferable as a more direct description of
that?
regulator-manually-controlled:
description: |
The regulator should never be enabled or disabled automatically,
only when explicitly requested by an external actor (e.g.
userspace).
type: boolean
This looks like putting policy and OS behavior into DT.
I can see why it might look that way, but I'd argue it's actually not.
The systems this is intended to support provide power to entirely
separate external devices -- think of a power distribution unit that
might have arbitrary things plugged into it. It seems to me like a
property of the hardware that those things shouldn't have their power
supply turned off (or on) just because a controller in the PDU rebooted.
I guess it easy
to understand in case of Linux which disables unclaimed regulators
during. But what if other system/firmware does not behave like that?
In this case, then no change would be needed -- a system that (unlike
Linux) doesn't twiddle regulator state on its own would just continue to
not do that.
And what is the "external actor"? OS is not an external actor?
It's admittedly a bit vague, but I couldn't think of a clearer way to
express what is a sort of nebulous concept -- essentially, some entity
outside the "driver" (or analogous software component) using the
information in the device-tree. In many common cases this would
essentially mean "a human user", since in the PDU-like systems I'm
targeting here the only thing that should ever be deciding to turn the
regulator on or off is an operator logged in to the system to manually
enable or disable an outlet. I was aiming to leave the wording a bit
more general though, since in some other context I could imagine some
other piece of software toggling things automatedly (e.g. lights getting
turned on and off on a schedule or something, if that's what happens to
be plugged in).
I could not get the problem you want to solve with this property - I
looked at cover letter and at commit msg.
The problem is that a driver deciding on its own to enable or disable
the regulator (e.g. during boot or shutdown) would be a critical failure
for the kind of systems I'm aiming to support.
I can only imagine that you want to keep regulator on, after last its
user disappears... but for what purpose? Do you expect that after system
shutdown the pin will stay high so regulator will be also on? If so, you
need hardware design, e.g. with some pull up (if control is over GPIO).
As described above, the regulators involved here (in these sorts of
PDU-like systems) provide power for external systems and devices. It is
critical that the controller's boot and shutdown sequences not alter the
state of the regulator.
If some additional concrete details would help clarify, the particular
system I'm working on at the moment is the Delta Power AHE-50DC [0]. It
has two redundant BMCs controlling 50 power outputs, each of which is
managed by an LM25066 [1] attached to the controllers via I2C. The
LM25066s maintain their power state independently of the controllers
booting or shutting down, and it's very important that if one controller
reboots (for a firmware update, say) that it not send I2C commands to
all the LM25066s telling them to turn off their outputs.
[0] https://www.open19.org/marketplace/delta-16kw-power-shelf/
[1] https://www.ti.com/lit/ds/symlink/lm25066.pdf
Thanks,
Zev