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Date:   Thu, 25 Mar 2021 08:55:04 -0600
From:   Alex Williamson <alex.williamson@redhat.com>
To:     Leon Romanovsky <leon@kernel.org>
Cc:     "Enrico Weigelt, metux IT consult" <info@metux.net>,
        Amey Narkhede <ameynarkhede03@gmail.com>,
        raphael.norwitz@nutanix.com, linux-pci@vger.kernel.org,
        bhelgaas@google.com, linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org,
        alay.shah@nutanix.com, suresh.gumpula@nutanix.com,
        shyam.rajendran@nutanix.com, felipe@nutanix.com
Subject: Re: [PATCH 4/4] PCI/sysfs: Allow userspace to query and set device
 reset mechanism
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On Thu, 25 Mar 2021 10:37:54 +0200
Leon Romanovsky <leon@kernel.org> wrote:

> On Wed, Mar 24, 2021 at 11:17:29AM -0600, Alex Williamson wrote:
> > On Wed, 24 Mar 2021 17:13:56 +0200
> > Leon Romanovsky <leon@kernel.org> wrote:  
> 
> <...>
> 
> > > Yes, and real testing/debugging almost always requires kernel rebuild.
> > > Everything else is waste of time.  
> > 
> > Sorry, this is nonsense.  Allowing users to debug issues without a full
> > kernel rebuild is a good thing.  
> 
> It is far from debug, this interface doesn't give you any answers why
> the reset didn't work, it just helps you to find the one that works.
> 
> Unless you believe that this information will be enough to understand
> the root cause, you will need to ask from the user to perform extra
> tests, maybe try some quirk. All of that requires from the users to
> rebuild their kernel.
> 
> So no, it is not debug.

It allows a user to experiment to determine (a) my device doesn't work
in a given scenario with the default configuration, but (b) if I change
the reset to this other thing it does work.  That is a step in
debugging.

It's absurd to think that a sysfs attribute could provide root cause,
but it might be enough for someone to further help that user.  It would
be a useful clue for a bug report.  Yes, reaching root cause might
involve building a kernel, but that doesn't invalidate that having a
step towards debugging in the base kernel might be a useful tool.

> > > > > > For policy preference, I already described how I've configured QEMU to
> > > > > > prefer a bus reset rather than a PM reset due to lack of specification
> > > > > > regarding the scope of a PM "soft reset".  This interface would allow a
> > > > > > system policy to do that same thing.
> > > > > > 
> > > > > > I don't think anyone is suggesting this as a means to avoid quirks that
> > > > > > would resolve reset issues and create the best default general behavior.
> > > > > > This provides a mechanism to test various reset methods, and thereby
> > > > > > identify broken methods, and set a policy.  Sure, that policy might be
> > > > > > to avoid a broken reset in the interim before it gets quirked and
> > > > > > there's potential for abuse there, but I think the benefits outweigh
> > > > > > the risks.      
> > > > > 
> > > > > This interface is proposed as first class citizen in the general sysfs
> > > > > layout. Of course, it will be seen as a way to bypass the kernel.
> > > > > 
> > > > > At least, put it under CONFIG_EXPERT option, so no distro will enable it
> > > > > by default.    
> > > > 
> > > > Of course we're proposing it to be accessible, it should also require
> > > > admin privileges to modify, sysfs has lots of such things.  If it's
> > > > relegated to non-default accessibility, it won't be used for testing
> > > > and it won't be available for system policy and it's pointless.    
> > > 
> > > We probably have difference in view of what testing is. I expect from
> > > the users who experience issues with reset to do extra steps and one of
> > > them is to require from them to compile their kernel.  
> > 
> > I would define the ability to generate a CI test that can pick a
> > device, unbind it from its driver, and iterate reset methods as a
> > worthwhile improvement in testing.  
> 
> Who is going to run this CI? At least all kernel CIs (external and
> internal to HW vendors) that I'm familiar are building kernel themselves.
> 
> Distro kernel is too bloat to be really usable for CI.

At this point I'm suspicious you're trolling.  A distro kernel CI
certainly uses the kernel they intend to ship and support in their
environment. You're concerned about a bloated kernel, but the proposal
here adds 2-bytes per device to track reset methods and a trivial array
in text memory, meanwhile you're proposing multiple per-device memory
allocations to enhance the feature you think is too bloated for CI.

> > > The root permissions doesn't protect from anything, SO lovers will use
> > > root without even thinking twice.  
> > 
> > Yes, with great power comes great responsibility.  Many admins ignore
> > this.  That's far beyond the scope of this series.  
> 
> <...>
> 
> > > I'm trying to help you with your use case of providing reset policy
> > > mechanism, which can be without CONFIG_EXPERT. However if you want
> > > to continue path of having specific reset type only, please ensure
> > > that this is not taken to the "bypass kernel" direction.  
> > 
> > You've lost me, are you saying you'd be in favor of an interface that
> > allows an admin to specify an arbitrary list of reset methods because
> > that's somehow more in line with a policy choice than a userspace
> > workaround?  This seems like unnecessary bloat because (a) it allows
> > the same bypass mechanism, and (b) a given device is only going to use
> > a single method anyway, so the functionality is unnecessary.  Please
> > help me understand how this favors the policy use case.  Thanks,  
> 
> The policy decision is global logic that is easier to grasp. At some
> point of our discussion, you presented the case where PM reset is not
> defined well and you prefer to do bus reset (something like that).
> 
> I expect that QEMU sets same reset policy for all devices at the same
> time instead of trying per-device to guess which one works.
> 
> And yes, you will be able to bypass kernel, but at least this interface
> will be broader than initial one that serves only SO and workarounds.

I still think allocating objects for a list and managing that list is
too bloated and complicated, but I agree that being able to have more
fine grained control could be useful.  Is it necessary to be able to
re-order reset methods or might it still be better aligned to a policy
use case if we allow plus and minus operators?  For example, a device
might list:

[pm] [bus]

Indicating that PM and bus reset are both available and enabled.  The
user could do:

echo -pm > reset_methods

This would result in:

pm [bus]

Indicating that both PM and bus resets are available, but only bus reset
is enabled (note this is the identical result to "echo bus >" in the
current proposal).  "echo +pm" or "echo default" could re-enable the PM
reset.  Would something like that be satisfactory?

If we need to allow re-ording, we'd want to use a byte-array where each
byte indicates a type of reset and perhaps a non-zero value in the
array indicates the method is enabled and the value indicates priority.
For example writing "dev_spec,flr,bus" would parse to write 1 to the
byte associated with the device specific reset, 2 to flr, 3 to bus
reset, then we'd process low to high (or maybe starting at a high value
to count down to zero might be more simple).  We could do that with
only adding less than a fixed 8-bytes per device and no dynamic
allocation.  Thoughts?  Thanks,

Alex