Re: [PATCH v17 09/12] PCI/AER: Allow clearing Error Status Register in FF mode

From: Kuppuswamy Sathyanarayanan
Date: Wed Mar 11 2020 - 14:15:14 EST



On 3/11/20 10:12 AM, Bjorn Helgaas wrote:

I can just state that it's done after OST returns but before _HPX or
driver is loaded. Any time in that range is fine. I can't get super
specific here because different OSes do different things. Even for
a given OS they change over time. And I need something generic
enough to support a wide variety of OS implementations.
Yeah. I don't know how to solve this.

Linux doesn't actually unload and reload drivers for the child devices
(Sathy, correct me if I'm wrong here) even though DPC containment
takes the link down and effectively unplugs and replugs the device. I
would *like* to handle it like hotplug, but some higher-level software
doesn't deal well with things like storage devices disappearing and
reappearing.

Since Linux doesn't actually re-enumerate the child devices, it
wouldn't evaluate _HPX again. It would probably be cleaner if it did,
but it's all tied up with the whole unplug/replug problem.
Yes, re-enumeration of child devices is handled by hot-plug path.
AFAIK, with current PCI driver design, I think its very difficult to create
dependency between current DPC handler and hot-plug device
enumeration handler.


For child devices of that port, obviously it's impossible to
access AER registers until DPC Trigger Status is cleared, and the
flowchart says the OS shouldn't access them until after _OST.

I'm actually not sure we currently do *anything* with child device
AER info in the EDR path. pcie_do_recovery() does walk the
sub-hierarchy of child devices, but it only calls error handling
callbacks in the child drivers; it doesn't do anything with the
child AER registers itself. And of course, this happens before
_OST, so it would be too early in any case. But maybe I'm missing
something here.
My understanding is that the OS read/clears AER in the case where OS
has native control of AER. Feedback from OSVs is they wanted to
continue to do that to keep the native OS controlled AER and FF
mechanism similar. The other way we could have done it would be to
have the firmware read/clear AER and report them to OS via APEI.
When Linux has native control of AER, it reads/clears AER status.
The flowchart is for the case where firmware has AER control, so I
guess Linux would not field AER interrupts and wouldn't expect to
read/clear AER status. So I *guess* Linux would assume APEI? But
that doesn't seem to be what the flowchart assumes.
Yes, in EDR case, based on our current Linux driver design, without
some spec changes it will be very difficult to implement the
clear the AER status of child devices part of the flow chart. This is the
reason why I did not implement that part in current patch set.

I think instead of depending on DPC status trigger to end the EDR
notification window, we should depend on some sort of handshake
between OS and firmware (may be some changes to _OST arg1 0:15 and
use _OST for it). Above change would give us a window to clear the
AER registers properly.

BTW, if/when this is updated, I have another question: the _OSC
DPC control bit currently allows the OS to write DPC Control
during that window. I understand the OS writing the RW1C *Status*
bits to clear them, but it seems like writing the DPC Control
register is likely to cause issues. The same question would apply
to the AER access we're talking about.
We could specify which particular bits can and can't be touched.
But it's hard to maintain as new bits are added. Probably better to
add some guidance that OS should read/clear error status, DPC
Trigger Status, etc. but shouldn't change masks/severity/control
bits/etc.
Yeah. I didn't mean at the level of individual bits; I was thinking
more of status/log/etc vs control registers. But maybe even that is
hard, I dunno.

--
Sathyanarayanan Kuppuswamy
Linux kernel developer