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Date:   Fri, 2 Sep 2022 15:29:08 +0200
From:   Greg Kroah-Hartman <gregkh@linuxfoundation.org>
To:     Daniel Vetter <daniel.vetter@ffwll.ch>
Cc:     Petr Mladek <pmladek@suse.com>,
        LKML <linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org>,
        DRI Development <dri-devel@lists.freedesktop.org>,
        Daniel Vetter <daniel.vetter@intel.com>,
        Jiri Slaby <jirislaby@kernel.org>,
        Ilpo =?iso-8859-1?Q?J=E4rvinen?= <ilpo.jarvinen@linux.intel.com>,
        Tetsuo Handa <penguin-kernel@i-love.sakura.ne.jp>,
        Xuezhi Zhang <zhangxuezhi1@coolpad.com>,
        Yangxi Xiang <xyangxi5@gmail.com>,
        nick black <dankamongmen@gmail.com>,
        Andrew Morton <akpm@linux-foundation.org>,
        Luis Chamberlain <mcgrof@kernel.org>,
        "Guilherme G. Piccoli" <gpiccoli@igalia.com>,
        Marco Elver <elver@google.com>,
        John Ogness <john.ogness@linutronix.de>,
        Sebastian Andrzej Siewior <bigeasy@linutronix.de>,
        David Gow <davidgow@google.com>,
        tangmeng <tangmeng@uniontech.com>,
        Tiezhu Yang <yangtiezhu@loongson.cn>,
        Chris Wilson <chris@chris-wilson.co.uk>
Subject: Re: [PATCH] kernel/panic: Drop unblank_screen call
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On Thu, Sep 01, 2022 at 09:26:27PM +0200, Daniel Vetter wrote:
> On Thu, 1 Sept 2022 at 13:35, Petr Mladek <pmladek@suse.com> wrote:
> >
> > On Tue 2022-08-30 16:50:04, Daniel Vetter wrote:
> > > console_unblank() does this too (called in both places right after),
> > > and with a lot more confidence inspiring approach to locking.
> > >
> > > Reconstructing this story is very strange:
> > >
> > > In b61312d353da ("oops handling: ensure that any oops is flushed to
> > > the mtdoops console") it is claimed that a printk(" "); flushed out
> > > the console buffer, which was removed in e3e8a75d2acf ("[PATCH]
> > > Extract and use wake_up_klogd()"). In todays kernels this is done way
> > > earlier in console_flush_on_panic with some really nasty tricks. I
> > > didn't bother to fully reconstruct this all, least because the call to
> > > bust_spinlock(0); gets moved every few years, depending upon how the
> > > wind blows (or well, who screamed loudest about the various issue each
> > > call site caused).
> > >
> > > Before that commit the only calls to console_unblank() where in s390
> > > arch code.
> > >
> > > The other side here is the console->unblank callback, which was
> > > introduced in 2.1.31 for the vt driver. Which predates the
> > > console_unblank() function by a lot, which was added (without users)
> > > in 2.4.14.3. So pretty much impossible to guess at any motivation
> > > here. Also afaict the vt driver is the only (and always was the only)
> > > console driver implementing the unblank callback, so no idea why a
> > > call to console_unblank() was added for the mtdooops driver - the
> > > action actually flushing out the console buffers is done from
> > > console_unlock() only.
> >
> > My understanding is that mtdoops is not a real console. The commit
> > 4b23aff083649eafa141 ("[MTD] oops and panic message logging to MTD
> > device") suggests that it was just (mis)using the console
> > infrastructure.
> >
> > The commit 2e386e4bac90554887e73d ("mtd: mtdoops: refactor as a
> > kmsg_dumper") converted it to use the new kmsg_dumper API that
> > was created for this use case.
> >
> > So, I would consider all the mtdoops-related changes as a misuse
> > of the console API.
> 
> Ah, that's a good piece of information that I didn't figure out.
> 
> Greg, if you haven't baked in the patch yet, can you perhaps add the
> above information from Petr to the commit message?

It's already baked, sorry :(