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Date:   Tue, 24 Jul 2018 01:18:11 +0200
From:   Boris Brezillon <boris.brezillon@bootlin.com>
To:     Brian Norris <computersforpeace@gmail.com>
Cc:     Zhiqiang Hou <Zhiqiang.Hou@nxp.com>, linux-mtd@lists.infradead.org,
        Linux Kernel <linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org>,
        David Woodhouse <dwmw2@infradead.org>,
        Boris BREZILLON <boris.brezillon@free-electrons.com>,
        Marek Vasut <marek.vasut@gmail.com>,
        Richard Weinberger <richard@nod.at>,
        Cyrille Pitchen <cyrille.pitchen@wedev4u.fr>,
        NeilBrown <neil@brown.name>
Subject: Re: [PATCHv3 2/2] mtd: m25p80: restore the status of SPI flash when
 exiting
Message-ID: <20180724011811.40165a35@bbrezillon>
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        <20171206025342.7266-3-Zhiqiang.Hou@nxp.com>
        <20180723181350.GA58212@ban.mtv.corp.google.com>
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        <CAN8TOE904WXMScHo1b2jhusz-L8eGBK=gzUUX079ZVfiFk+HoQ@mail.gmail.com>
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+Neil

On Mon, 23 Jul 2018 15:06:43 -0700
Brian Norris <computersforpeace@gmail.com> wrote:

> Hi Boris,
> 
> On Mon, Jul 23, 2018 at 1:10 PM, Boris Brezillon
> <boris.brezillon@bootlin.com> wrote:
> > On Mon, 23 Jul 2018 11:13:50 -0700
> > Brian Norris <computersforpeace@gmail.com> wrote:  
> >> I noticed this got merged, but I wanted to put my 2 cents in here:  
> >
> > I wish you had replied to this thread when it was posted (more than
> > 6 months ago). Reverting the patch now implies making some people
> > unhappy because they'll have to resort to their old out-of-tree
> > hacks :-(.  
> 
> I'd say I'm sorry for not following things closely these days, but I'm
> not really that sorry. There are plenty of other capable hands. And if
> y'all shoot yourselves in the foot, so be it. This patch isn't going
> to blow things up, but now that I did finally notice it (because it
> happened to show up in a list of backports I was looking at), I
> thought better late than never to remind you.
> 
> For way of notification: Marek already noticed that we've started down
> a slippery slope months ago:
> 
> https://lkml.org/lkml/2018/4/8/141
> Re: [PATCH] mtd: spi-nor: clear Extended Address Reg on switch to
> 3-byte addressing.
> 
> I'm not quite sure why that wasn't taken to its logical conclusion --
> that the hack should be reverted.
> 
> This problem has been noted many times already, and we've always
> stayed on the side of *avoiding* this hack. A few references from a
> search of my email:
> 
> http://lists.infradead.org/pipermail/linux-mtd/2013-March/046343.html
> [PATCH 1/3] mtd: m25p80: utilize dedicated 4-byte addressing commands
> 
> http://lists.infradead.org/pipermail/barebox/2014-September/020682.html
> [RFC] MTD m25p80 3-byte addressing and boot problem
> 
> http://lists.infradead.org/pipermail/linux-mtd/2015-February/057683.html
> [PATCH 2/2] m25p80: if supported put chip to deep power down if not used

To my defense, I was not actively following SPI NOR topics at this
time, but, in the light of those discussions, I still keep thinking we
should try our best to improve support for broken HW.
So, ideally, we should find a way to support getting back to 3-byte
addressing mode when resetting, while generating enough noise to make
people well aware that their board design is broken (I think the
proposal of the new DT prop + a WARN_ON() is a good idea).

> 
> >> On Wed, Dec 06, 2017 at 10:53:42AM +0800, Zhiqiang Hou wrote:  
> >> > From: Hou Zhiqiang <Zhiqiang.Hou@nxp.com>
> >> >
> >> > Restore the status to be compatible with legacy devices.
> >> > Take Freescale eSPI boot for example, it copies (in 3 Byte
> >> > addressing mode) the RCW and bootloader images from SPI flash
> >> > without firing a reset signal previously, so the reboot command
> >> > will fail without reseting the addressing mode of SPI flash.
> >> > This patch implement .shutdown function to restore the status
> >> > in reboot process, and add the same operation to the .remove
> >> > function.  
> >>
> >> We have previously rejected this patch multiple times, because the above
> >> comment demonstrates a broken product.  
> >
> > If we were to only support working HW parts, I fear Linux would not
> > support a lot of HW (that's even more true when it comes to flashes :P).  
> 
> You stopped allowing UBI to attach to MLC NAND recently, no? That
> sounds like almost the same boat -- you've probably killed quite a few
> shitty products, if they were to use mainline directly.

Well, that's a bit different in that it's purely a SW issue, and we
also try to encourage people to take over the work we started with
Richard to fix that problem. But I get your point, we broke setups that
were working in an unreliable way, pretty much what you're suggesting to
do here.

> 
> Anyway, that's derailing the issue. Supporting broken hardware isn't
> something you try to do by applying the same hack to all systems. You
> normally try to apply your hack as narrowly as possible.

This, I agree with.

> You seem to
> imply that below. So maybe that's a solution to move forward with. But
> I'd personally be just as happy to see the patch reverted.
> 
> >> You cannot guarantee that all
> >> reboots will invoke the .shutdown() method -- what about crashes? What
> >> about watchdog resets? IIUC, those will hit the same broken behavior,
> >> and have unexepcted behavior in your bootloader.  
> >
> > Yes, there are corner cases that are not addressed with this approach,  
> 
> Is a system crash really a corner case? :D

Well, nothing forces you to reset the platform using a HW reset when
that happens :P.

> 
> > but it still seems to improve things. Of course, that means the
> > user should try to re-route all HW reset sources to SW ones (RESET input
> > pin muxed to the GPIO controller, watchdog generating an interrupt
> > instead of directly asserting the RESET output pin), which is not always
> > possible, but even when it's not, isn't it better to have a setup that
> > works fine 99% of the time instead of 50% of the time?  
> 
> Perhaps, but not at the expense of future development. And
> realistically, no one is doing that if they have this hack. Most
> people won't even know that this hack is protecting them at all (so
> again, they won't try to mitigate the problem any further).

Unless we add a huge backtrace at probe time which forces them to look
closer at what they did wrong (like you seem to suggest below).

> 
> >> I suppose one could argue for doing this in remove(), but AIUI you're
> >> just papering over system bugs by introducing the shutdown() function
> >> here. Thus, I'd prefer we drop the shutdown() method to avoid misleading
> >> other users of this driver.  
> >
> > I understand your point. But if the problem is about making sure people
> > designing new boards get that right, why not complaining at probe time
> > when things are wrong?
> >
> > I mean, spi_nor_restore() seems to only do something on very specific
> > NORs (those on which a SW RESET does not resets the addressing
> > mode).  
> 
> The point isn't that SW RESET doesn't reset the addressing mode -- it
> does on any flash I've seen. The point is that most systems are built
> around a stateless assumption in these flash. IIRC, there wasn't even
> a SW RESET command at all until these "huge" flash came around and
> stateful addressing modes came about. So boot ROMs and bootloaders
> would have to be updated to start figuring out when/how to do this SW
> RESET. And once two vendors start doing it differently (I'm not sure:
> have they done this already? I think so) it's no longer something a
> boot ROM will get right.
> 
> The only way to get this stuff right is to have a hardware reset, or
> else to avoid all of the stateful modes in software.

Okay.

> 
> > So, how about adding a flag that says "my board has the NOR HW
> > RESET pin wired" (there would be a DT props to set that flag). Then you
> > add a WARN_ON() when this flag is not set and a NOR chip impacted by
> > this bug is detected.  
> 
> I'd kinda prefer the reverse. There really isn't a need to document
> anything for a working system (software usually can't control this
> RESET pin). The burden should be on the b0rked system to document
> where it needs unsound hacks to survive.

That's true.

> 
> > This way you make sure people are informed that
> > they're doing something wrong, and for those who can't change their HW
> > (because it's already widely deployed), you have a fix that improve
> > things.  
> 
> Or even better: put this hack behind a DT flag, so that one has to
> admit that their board design is broken before it will even do
> anything. Proposal: "linux,badly-designed-flash-reset".

I think we can remove the "linux," prefix. If it's badly designed, it
applies to all OSes, don't you think?

Regards,

Boris