[PATCH] char: misc: Use __register_chrdev() to register the actual minor counts

From: Hou Wenlong
Date: Fri Mar 21 2025 - 00:26:20 EST


In commit ab760791c0cf ("char: misc: Increase the maximum number of
dynamic misc devices to 1048448"), the minor number of misc char device
is increased to MINORMASK + 1. However, it still uses register_chrdev(),
which defaults to registering the misc char device with only 256 minor
numbers. Therefore, when a misc device is given a minor number greater
than 255, the device file fails to open in kobj_lookup(). As a solution,
use __register_chrdev() to register the actual minor counts to
accommodate this increase.

Signed-off-by: Hou Wenlong <houwenlong.hwl@xxxxxxxxxxxx>
---
In our environment, the per-cpu coresight_tmc driver occupies too many
minor numbers, which ultimately allocates minor number 256 for our misc
device, resulting in a failure to open the device file in /dev. I'm not
sure if this is a bug or if userspace can only use fewer than 256 minor
numbers. Therefore, I didn't add a fix tag here.
---
drivers/char/misc.c | 2 +-
1 file changed, 1 insertion(+), 1 deletion(-)

diff --git a/drivers/char/misc.c b/drivers/char/misc.c
index f7dd455dd0dd..dda466f9181a 100644
--- a/drivers/char/misc.c
+++ b/drivers/char/misc.c
@@ -315,7 +315,7 @@ static int __init misc_init(void)
goto fail_remove;

err = -EIO;
- if (register_chrdev(MISC_MAJOR, "misc", &misc_fops))
+ if (__register_chrdev(MISC_MAJOR, 0, MINORMASK + 1, "misc", &misc_fops))
goto fail_printk;
return 0;

--
2.31.1