[PATCH RFC] regulator: core: fix constraints handling if current state out of range

From: Andreas Kemnade

Date: Mon Nov 03 2025 - 14:33:48 EST


Given a regulator set to an initially out of constraints value,
which cannot be set to the exact voltage given in the min or max constraints,
current code tries to apply a fixed value which obviously fails.

To fix that, allow a range as a constraint in out of bound cases.

A practical use case for this scenario is if there is a quotient
in uV_step which needs to get rounded.
The devicetree should describe the hardware and not depend on the
idea of a specific driver implementation how to round things,
so a small range need to be specified.
Instead of rounding uV_step another user of the devicetree
might be specifying uV_max and uV_min and therefore only needs
to round the end result leading to slightly different results.

Stumbled upon it while creating a regulator with uV_step = 5000000 / 255

Signed-off-by: Andreas Kemnade <akemnade@xxxxxxxxxx>
Fixes: fa93fd4ecc9c ("regulator: core: Ensure we are at least in bounds for our constraints")
---
not tested yet to avoid magic smoke in case of errors. I rather prefer
having a second pair of eyes on it in this sensitive area.
---
drivers/regulator/core.c | 8 ++------
1 file changed, 2 insertions(+), 6 deletions(-)

diff --git a/drivers/regulator/core.c b/drivers/regulator/core.c
index dd7b10e768c0..6b491c21ec5b 100644
--- a/drivers/regulator/core.c
+++ b/drivers/regulator/core.c
@@ -1238,13 +1238,9 @@ static int machine_constraints_voltage(struct regulator_dev *rdev,
target_min = current_uV;
target_max = current_uV;

- if (current_uV < rdev->constraints->min_uV) {
+ if ((current_uV < rdev->constraints->min_uV) ||
+ (current_uV > rdev->constraints->max_uV)) {
target_min = rdev->constraints->min_uV;
- target_max = rdev->constraints->min_uV;
- }
-
- if (current_uV > rdev->constraints->max_uV) {
- target_min = rdev->constraints->max_uV;
target_max = rdev->constraints->max_uV;
}


---
base-commit: dcb6fa37fd7bc9c3d2b066329b0d27dedf8becaa
change-id: 20251103-regu-fix-d650274afa89

Best regards,
--
Andreas Kemnade <akemnade@xxxxxxxxxx>