[PATCH 4/4] fbdev: Debug knob to register without holding console_lock

[Rob Clark]

On Tue, Sep 1, 2015 at 10:41 AM, Tomi Valkeinen <tomi.valkeinen at ti.com> wrote:
>
>
> On 01/09/15 17:34, Rob Clark wrote:
>> On Tue, Sep 1, 2015 at 6:32 AM, Tomi Valkeinen <tomi.valkeinen at ti.com> wrote:
>>>
>>>
>>> On 25/08/15 22:24, Rob Clark wrote:
>>>> On Tue, Aug 25, 2015 at 9:45 AM, Daniel Vetter <daniel.vetter at ffwll.ch> wrote:
>>>>> When the usual fbcon legacy options are enabled we have
>>>>> ->register_framebuffer
>>>>>   ->fb notifier chain calls into fbcon
>>>>>     ->fbcon sets up console on new fbi
>>>>>       ->fbi->set_par
>>>>>         ->drm_fb_helper_set_par exercises full kms api
>>>>>
>>>>> And because of locking inversion hilarity all of register_framebuffer
>>>>> is done with the console lock held. Which means that the first time on
>>>>> driver load we exercise _all_ the kms code (all probe paths and
>>>>> modeset paths for everything connected) is under the console lock.
>>>>> That means if anything goes belly-up in that big pile of code nothing
>>>>> ever reaches logfiles (and the machine is dead).
>>>>>
>>>>> Usual tactic to debug that is to temporarily remove those console_lock
>>>>> calls to be able to capture backtraces. I'm fed up writing this patch
>>>>> and recompiling kernels. Hence this patch here to add an unsafe,
>>>>> kernel-taining option to do this at runtime.
>>>>>
>>>>> Cc: Jean-Christophe Plagniol-Villard <plagnioj at jcrosoft.com>
>>>>> Cc: Tomi Valkeinen <tomi.valkeinen at ti.com>
>>>>> Cc: linux-fbdev at vger.kernel.org
>>>>> Signed-off-by: Daniel Vetter <daniel.vetter at ffwll.ch>
>>>>
>>>> This one was causing me some problems, if I tried to enable
>>>> lockless_register_fb.  It *looks* like it should work, so I'm not
>>>> quite sure what the deal is.  But I'm 110% fan of getting something
>>>> like this working, because console_lock is pretty much the bane of kms
>>>> developer's existence..
>>>>
>>>> I'll have to debug further on a system where I can see more than the
>>>> bottom three lines of the second to last backtrace..
>>>
>>> Any idea if anyone has ever looked at properly fixing this?
>>
>> I hadn't had a chance to look at it further yet..  I think Daniel
>> claimed it worked for him, but he was probably on intel-next, where I
>> was on drm-next at the time which seemed to be having some unrelated
>> i915 issues (when I was trying to debug atomic fb-helper patches).  So
>> can't really say that the issue I had was actually related to this
>> patch.  I'll try again later this week or next, when hopefully i915 in
>> drm-next is in better shape..
>
> Oh, I didn't mean this patch, but the whole console lock in general.
> I've also banged my head to a wall because of it =).

oh, not sure.. every time I've started looking closer at
console/console_lock I run away screaming..  I guess if it were
possible to push the lock down further so only drivers that needed the
lock (presumably serial/net/etc) could take it, that would be nice..
but not sure I am that brave..

BR,
-R

>  Tomi
>