Re: [PATCH v2] driver core: Don't let a device probe until it's ready

[Danilo Krummrich]

On Tue Mar 31, 2026 at 5:26 PM CEST, Doug Anderson wrote:
> Hi,
>
> On Tue, Mar 31, 2026 at 7:42 AM Danilo Krummrich <dakr@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
>>
>> > @@ -848,6 +848,18 @@ static int __driver_probe_device(const struct device_driver *drv, struct device
>> >       if (dev->driver)
>> >               return -EBUSY;
>> >
>> > +     /*
>> > +      * In device_add(), the "struct device" gets linked into the subsystem's
>> > +      * list of devices and broadcast to userspace (via uevent) before we're
>> > +      * quite ready to probe. Those open pathways to driver probe before
>> > +      * we've finished enough of device_add() to reliably support probe.
>> > +      * Detect this and tell other pathways to try again later. device_add()
>> > +      * itself will also try to probe immediately after setting
>> > +      * "ready_to_probe".
>> > +      */
>> > +     if (!dev->ready_to_probe)
>> > +             return dev_err_probe(dev, -EPROBE_DEFER, "Device not ready_to_probe");
>>
>> Are we sure this dev->ready_to_probe dance does not introduce a new subtle bug
>> considering that ready_to_probe is within a bitfield of struct device?
>>
>> I.e. are we sure there are no potential concurrent modifications of other fields
>> in this bitfield that are not protected with the device lock?
>>
>> For instance, in __driver_attach() we set dev->can_match if
>> driver_match_device() returns -EPROBE_DEFER without the device lock held.
>
> Bleh. Thank you for catching this. I naively assumed the device lock
> protected the bitfield, but I didn't verify that.
>
>
>> This is exactly the case you want to protect against, i.e. device_add() racing
>> with __driver_attach().
>>
>> So, there is a chance that the dev->ready_to_probe change gets interleaved with
>> a dev->can_match change.
>>
>> I think all this goes away if we stop using bitfields for synchronization; we
>> should convert some of those to flags that we can modify with set_bit() and
>> friends instead.
>
> That sounds reasonable to me. Do you want me to send a v3 where I
> create a new "unsigned long flags" in struct device and introduce this
> as the first flag? If there are additional bitfields you want me to
> convert, I can send them as additional patches in the series as long
> as it's not too big of a change...

I think the one with the biggest potential to cause real issues is can_match, as
it is modified without the device lock held from __driver_attach(), which can be
called at any time concurrently.

(I think there are others as well, but they are more on the theoretical side of
things. For instance, dma_skip_sync is modified by dma_set_mask(), which
strictly speaking does not require the device lock to be held. In practice,
that's probably never an issue since dma_set_mask() is typically called from bus
callbacks usually, but it's not strictly a requirement.)

More in general, from a robustness point of view, everything that is set once at
device creation time is fine to be a bitfield; bits that are used for
synchronization or are modified concurrently, I'd rather use bitops.