Re: [PATCH v11 1/2] rust: Add dma_fence abstractions

[Danilo Krummrich]

On Sat Sep 5, 2026 at 10:53 AM CEST, Philipp Stanner wrote:
> +impl<'a, T: Send + Sync + FenceContextOps> Drop for DriverFence<'a, T> {
> +    fn drop(&mut self) {
> +        let guard = self.as_fence().lock();
> +
> +        // Use dma_fence_test_signaled_flag() instead of
> +        // dma_fence_is_signaled_locked() because the C backend wants to get rid
> +        // of the latter.
> +
> +        // SAFETY: `guard` is valid until the `call_rcu()` below.
> +        let signaled: bool = unsafe { bindings::dma_fence_test_signaled_flag(guard.as_raw()) };
> +        if !signaled {
> +            pr_err!("DriverFence drops unsignaled. Danger of memory corruption!\n");

I'm not sure we want to keep this as pr_err!().

If we really want to keep warning about this I'd either make this a WARN_ON() or
dev_warn() (we can easily store a device reference in the fence context), such
that it is at least clear who's the offender.

My preference would be dev_warn(), as I don't think it is that bad of an error
condition to begin with. It would be pretty odd to have a driver where a DriverFence
drops while the corresponding GPU job is not dropped. And further it'd be pretty
odd if dropping the GPU job would not imply that the GPU actually stopped
processing the work associated with the job.

For the same reason I also think it is a bit misleading to say "Danger of memory
corruption!". It's not the signaling of the fence that does prevent memory
corruption; it's the driver implementing a proper teardown sequence. And if this
sequence is structurally detached from the lifetime of the DriverFence (and Job)
structure, something is structurally wrong with the driver anyway.

Furthermore, it would be very natural to just require the generic Job type to
own a DriverFence. In this case it becomes natural to either signal the fence on
Job completion, or just drop the Jobqueue, which does the ring teardown and
subsequently drops all the Jobs, which would also imply signaling the
DriverFence with ECANCELED. I.e. I think the fact that the DriverFence is
signaled with ECANCELED if it is still unsignaled should just be an API contract
and not an error condition.

Honestly, given all that, I'd expect drivers to otherwise just wrap a
DriverFence in a new type, which just signales the inner DriverFence with an
error code in its own destructor.