Re: [RFC 1/2] virtio_console: Add support for DMA memory allocation

From: Rusty Russell
Date: Wed Sep 05 2012 - 23:01:42 EST


"Michael S. Tsirkin" <mst@xxxxxxxxxx> writes:
> On Tue, Sep 04, 2012 at 06:58:47PM +0200, Sjur BrÃndeland wrote:
>> Hi Michael,
>>
>> > Exactly. Though if we just fail load it will be much less code.
>> >
>> > Generally, using a feature bit for this is a bit of a problem though:
>> > normally driver is expected to be able to simply ignore
>> > a feature bit. In this case driver is required to
>> > do something so a feature bit is not a good fit.
>> > I am not sure what the right thing to do is.
>>
>> I see - so in order to avoid the binding between driver and device
>> there are two options I guess. Either make virtio_dev_match() or
>> virtcons_probe() fail. Neither of them seems like the obvious choice.
>>
>> Maybe adding a check for VIRTIO_CONSOLE_F_DMA_MEM match
>> between device and driver in virtcons_probe() is the lesser evil?
>>
>> Regards,
>> Sjur
>
> A simplest thing to do is change dev id. rusty?

For generic usage, this is correct. But my opinion is that fallback on
feature non-ack is quality-of-implementation issue: great to have, but
there are cases where you just want to fail with "you're too old".

And in this case, an old system simply will never work. So it's a
question of how graceful the failure is.

Can your userspace loader can refuse to proceed if the driver doesn't
ack the bits? If so, it's simpler than a whole new ID.

Cheers,
Rusty.
--
To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in
the body of a message to majordomo@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html
Please read the FAQ at http://www.tux.org/lkml/