Re: [PATCH v9 8/8] serial: 8250: retain DMA resources when termination fails

[Raul E Rangel]

Hi James,

Thanks for replacing the fixed 100 ms sleep with exponential backoff
(1 ms -> 1 s) and adding the initial/ongoing/recovery diagnostics in v9.

Following up on our v8 discussion regarding blocking in
serial8250_terminate_dma() versus non-blocking resource quarantine:

1. Why non-blocking quarantine cannot be done purely inside 8250_dma:
   I agree with your v8 reply and the updated commit message here that
   serial8250_release_dma() cannot simply return early while leaving
   serial_core to proceed with normal teardown:

   a) Immediately after serial8250_release_dma(up) returns in
      serial8250_do_shutdown() (8250_port.c:2474-2511, and similarly in
      omap_8250_shutdown() at 8250_omap.c:794-803), the 8250 driver itself
      clears the hardware FIFOs (serial8250_clear_fifos()), reads UART_RX,
      frees the IRQ (up->ops->release_irq(up)), and drops runtime PM
      (serial8250_rpm_put_tx(up) / serial8250_rpm_put(up)).
   b) In uart_tty_port_shutdown() (serial_core.c:1841-1853), immediately
      after uart_port_shutdown(port) returns, serial_core unconditionally
      calls uart_free_xmit_buf(port) (line 1850) — freeing the page that
      dma->tx_addr is still DMA-mapped to — and powers down the UART via
      uart_change_pm(state, UART_PM_STATE_OFF) (line 1852). Likewise,
      uart_suspend_port() (serial_core.c:2502-2514) calls ops->shutdown(uport)
      (line 2502) and unconditionally sets UART_PM_STATE_OFF (line 2512).
   c) Even if startup() returns -EIO on reopen when DMA is still active,
      uart_port_startup() (serial_core.c:422-423) has:
        if (retval && capable(CAP_SYS_ADMIN))
                return 1;
      which causes uart_port_activate() (serial_core.c:2060-2062) to set
      tty_port_set_active(port, true) with tty_port_initialized(port) == false
      and allows root open() (serial_core.c:2040-2042) to succeed (0). From
      that state, ioctl(TIOCSSERIAL) -> uart_set_info() (serial_core.c:1068)
      -> uart_shutdown() (serial_core.c:466-511, which calls
      uart_free_xmit_buf() at line 510 outside if (tty_port_initialized))
      or uart_hangup() (serial_core.c:1942-1950) or uart_change_port() ->
      release_port() (serial_core.c:932-933, 1072) can free the TX buffer,
      power down the UART, and release MMIO mappings while DMA is active.

   We modeled these cross-layer paths in Serial8250TxDmaV8.tla
   (QuarantineGuardsShutdown, QuarantineGuardsAdminOpen, and
   NoDmaOnPoweredOffUart in Serial8250TxDmaV8_UnguardedQuarantineHazard.cfg
   and Serial8250TxDmaV8_AdminReopenQuarantineHazard.cfg vs.
   Serial8250TxDmaV8_TerminateRetryHang_Fixed.cfg, alongside
   Serial8250TxDmaV8_QuarantinePioReopenHazard.cfg at
   https://github.com/ismell/linux-8250-dma-tla), and TLC confirms that
   quarantine without those serial_core and PM guards violates
   NoDmaOnPoweredOffUart / NoConcurrentFifoAccess (in 6 states) and
   NoUsersAtFree (in 7 states). Given that enforcing non-blocking quarantine
   requires coordinated changes across serial_core.c, runtime PM, and 8250
   shutdown, addressing non-blocking quarantine in a separate follow-up
   series and documenting the limitation here makes sense.

2. What in-tree DMAengine providers actually return from terminate_all:
   For context on when the retry loop in serial8250_terminate_dma() can
   trigger, I audited all 78 .device_terminate_all implementations in
   drivers/dma/:
   - 64 out of 78 unconditionally return 0.
   - Among DMA controllers used with 8250 UARTs, synchronous FIFO-draining
     drivers (drivers/dma/dw/core.c dwc_chan_pause ~40 us,
     drivers/dma/idma64.c idma64_chan_deactivate ~100 us) already poll in
     microseconds inside terminate_all and return 0.
   - The only 8250-paired DMA controllers that can return non-zero are:
     * drivers/dma/tegra186-gpc-dma.c (tegra_dma_terminate_all, lines
       714-743), which already polls readl_relaxed_poll_timeout_atomic()
       for up to 5000 us (5 ms) in tegra_dma_stop_client() / tegra_dma_pause()
       / tegra_dma_pause_noerr() (lines 389-414, 676-712) before returning
       -ETIMEDOUT; and
     * drivers/dma/at_xdmac.c (at_xdmac_device_terminate_all, lines
       1999-2039), which only returns < 0 if pm_runtime_resume_and_get()
       fails.
     (Even across all 14 non-zero .device_terminate_all implementations in
     drivers/dma/, the only one designed around a caller retry loop is
     cppi41_stop_chan() -> cppi41_tear_down_chan() in drivers/dma/ti/cppi41.c:
     652-770, which is a USB MUSB controller used only by musb_cppi41.c.)

Thanks,
Raul