Return-Path: Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org via listexpand id S1753513Ab0FXAEN (ORCPT ); Wed, 23 Jun 2010 20:04:13 -0400 Received: from mail2.shareable.org ([80.68.89.115]:33266 "EHLO mail2.shareable.org" rhost-flags-OK-OK-OK-OK) by vger.kernel.org with ESMTP id S1751940Ab0FXAEM (ORCPT ); Wed, 23 Jun 2010 20:04:12 -0400 Date: Thu, 24 Jun 2010 01:04:03 +0100 From: Jamie Lokier To: Ryan Mallon Cc: David Brownell , David Brownell , gregkh@suse.de, linux kernel , ext-jani.1.nikula@nokia.com, Uwe =?iso-8859-1?Q?Kleine-K=F6nig?= , Andrew Morton , linux-arm-kernel Subject: Re: [RFC PATCH] Rework gpio cansleep (was Re: gpiolib and sleeping gpios) Message-ID: <20100624000403.GH7058@shareable.org> References: <191168.5104.qm@web180308.mail.gq1.yahoo.com> <4C21955D.1020502@bluewatersys.com> <20100623225345.GD7058@shareable.org> <4C22936F.9050300@bluewatersys.com> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Disposition: inline In-Reply-To: <4C22936F.9050300@bluewatersys.com> User-Agent: Mutt/1.5.13 (2006-08-11) Sender: linux-kernel-owner@vger.kernel.org List-ID: X-Mailing-List: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org Content-Length: 3072 Lines: 66 Ryan Mallon wrote: > On 06/24/2010 10:53 AM, Jamie Lokier wrote: > > Ryan Mallon wrote: > >> On 06/23/2010 04:37 PM, David Brownell wrote: > >> I'm not. Some gpios, such as those on io expanders, may sleep in their > >> implementations of the gpio_(set/get) functions. > > > > I'm having a hard time figuring out where some GPIOs I'm using fit > > into this picture. > > > > I have some hardware that is currently using a 2.4.26 kernel, but I > > look from time to time at forward-porting all the drivers to 2.6.recent. > > > > It has an I2C driven GPIO expander, with a watchdog reset chip hanging > > off the expander. > > > > The watchdog is kept alive off the back end of a timer BH, which means > > the I2C GPIO routines are written to be safe in BH context (which > > isn't sleepable), but they can't be used in IRQ context because the > > necessary spin_lock_irqsave() would turn off interrupts for too long > > for other subsystems to function properly. > > Do the implementations of the get/set calls for the io expander gpios > sleep at all? No, because sleeping isn't allowed in BH context. (Note that this is 2.4.26 code - things have changed a bit for 2.6, but the hardware is the same, and still needs the I2C watchdog to be driven from a BH-like context). > > How should I flag those GPIO routines in your scheme? They're safe to > > use in some non-sleeping contexts, but not safe in irq context. > > The idea in my proposal is to use gpio_request in a driver if the > requested gpio can never sleep (ie because of the context it is used > in), and gpio_request_cansleep if the gpio is never used from non-sleep > safe context in a driver. I suggested stripping back the patch to just > add the gpio_request_cansleep function. > > In the current code, if a driver ever calls gpio_(set/get)_value on a > gpio then you cannot pass a sleeping gpio to that driver. The request > will succeed, but you will get warnings with the get/get calls are made. > My idea is basically to move the denotation of whether a gpio will be > used in non-sleep safe context to the gpio request. The reason I'm asking about my scenario is because the GPIO routines can't sleep and are used from a non-sleep safe context - but they are not safe to call in irq contexts. So my watchdog driver would have to call gpio_request (not _cansleep) - that's fine. But if I connected other GPIOs from the same GPIO driver (other lines on the same I/O expander chip) to another GPIO-using driver which happens to use them from irq context, then your changes won't detect the problem - the code will just break at runtime. Of course if I did that, it would be my fault and my problem. I get to keep both pieces etc. But it's a scenario which your proposal would fail to catch at compile time, that's why I bring it up. -- Jamie -- To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in the body of a message to majordomo@vger.kernel.org More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html Please read the FAQ at http://www.tux.org/lkml/