> Am 26.03.2014 um 22:40 schrieb Konrad Rzeszutek Wilk <konrad.w...@oracle.com>:
> 
>> On Wed, Mar 26, 2014 at 01:40:32AM +0000, Stuart Yoder wrote:
>> Hi Greg,
>> 
>> We (Linaro, Freescale, Virtual Open Systems) are trying get an issue
>> closed that has been perculating for a while around creating a mechanism
>> that will allow kernel drivers like vfio can bind to devices of any type.
>> 
>> This thread with you:
>> http://www.spinics.net/lists/kvm-arm/msg08370.html
>> ...seems to have died out, so am trying to get your response
>> and will summarize again.  Vfio drivers in the kernel (regardless of
>> bus type) need to bind to devices of any type.  The driver's function
>> is to simply export hardware resources of any type to user space.
>> 
>> There are several approaches that have been proposed:
> 
> You seem to have missed the one I proposed.
>> 
>>   1.  new_id -- (current approach) the user explicitly registers
>>       each new device type with the vfio driver using the new_id
>>       mechanism.
>> 
>>       Problem: multiple drivers will be resident that handle the
>>       same device type...and there is nothing user space hotplug
>>       infrastructure can do to help.
>> 
>>   2.  "any id" -- the vfio driver could specify a wildcard match
>>       of some kind in its ID match table which would allow it to
>>       match and bind to any possible device id.  However,
>>       we don't want the vfio driver grabbing _all_ devices...just the ones we
>>       explicitly want to pass to user space.
>> 
>>       The proposed patch to support this was to create a new flag
>>       "sysfs_bind_only" in struct device_driver.  When this flag
>>       is set, the driver can only bind to devices via the sysfs
>>       bind file.  This would allow the wildcard match to work.
>> 
>>       Patch is here:
>>       https://lkml.org/lkml/2013/12/3/253
>> 
>>   3.  "Driver initiated explicit bind" -- with this approach the
>>       vfio driver would create a private 'bind' sysfs object
>>       and the user would echo the requested device into it:
>> 
>>       echo 0001:03:00.0 > /sys/bus/pci/drivers/vfio-pci/vfio_bind
>> 
>>       In order to make that work, the driver would need to call
>>       driver_probe_device() and thus we need this patch:
>>       https://lkml.org/lkml/2014/2/8/175
> 
> 4). Use the 'unbind' (from the original device) and 'bind' to vfio driver.

This is approach 2, no?

> 
> Which I think is what is currently being done. Why is that not sufficient?

How would 'bind to vfio driver' look like?

> The only thing I see in the URL is " That works, but it is ugly."
> There is some mention of race but I don't see how - if you do the 'unbind'
> on the original driver and then bind the BDF to the VFIO how would you get
> a race?

Typically on PCI, you do a

  - add wildcard (pci id) match to vfio driver
  - unbind driver
  -> reprobe
  -> device attaches to vfio driver because it is the least recent match
  - remove wildcard match from vfio driver

If in between you hotplug add a card of the same type, it gets attached to vfio 
- even though the logical "default driver" would be the device specific driver.


Alex

> 
>> 
>> Would like your comment on these options-- option #3 is preferred
>> and is literally a 2 line patch.
>> 
>> Thanks,
>> Stuart
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