[PATCH 0/6] drm: Add mouse cursor hotspot support to atomic KMS

Fri Jun 10 07:49:31 UTC 2022

On Thu, 9 Jun 2022 19:39:39 +0000
Zack Rusin <zackr at vmware.com> wrote:

> On Wed, 2022-06-08 at 10:53 +0300, Pekka Paalanen wrote:
> > On Tue, 7 Jun 2022 17:50:24 +0000
> > Zack Rusin <zackr at vmware.com> wrote:
> >   
> > > On Tue, 2022-06-07 at 11:07 +0300, Pekka Paalanen wrote:  
> > > > On Fri, 03 Jun 2022 14:14:59 +0000
> > > > Simon Ser <contact at emersion.fr> wrote:
> > > >     
> > > > > Hi,
> > > > > 
> > > > > Please, read this thread:
> > > > > https://lists.freedesktop.org/archives/dri-devel/2020-March/thread.html#259615
> > > > > 
> > > > > It has a lot of information about the pitfalls of cursor hotspot and
> > > > > other things done by VM software.
> > > > > 
> > > > > In particular: since the driver will ignore the KMS cursor plane
> > > > > position set by user-space, I don't think it's okay to just expose
> > > > > without opt-in from user-space (e.g. with a DRM_CLIENT_CAP).
> > > > > 
> > > > > cc wayland-devel and Pekka for user-space feedback.
> > > > > 
> > > > > On Thursday, June 2nd, 2022 at 17:42, Zack Rusin <zack at kde.org> wrote:
> > > > >     
> > > > > > - all userspace code needs to hardcore a list of drivers which require
> > > > > > hotspots because there's no way to query from drm "does this driver
> > > > > > require hotspot"      
> > > > > 
> > > > > Can you elaborate? I'm not sure I understand what you mean here.
> > > > >     
> > > > 
> > > > Hi Zack and everyone,
> > > > 
> > > > I would like to try to reboot this discussion and explain where I come
> > > > from. Maybe I have misunderstood something.    
> > > 
> > > <snip> First of all thanks for restarting the discussions. I think Gerd did a good
> > > job responding to individual points, so let me take a step back and explain the big
> > > picture here so we can reboot.
> > >   
> > > > Which root problems do you want to solve exactly?    
> > > 
> > > The problem that this patch set is solving is the relatively trivial problem of not
> > > having a way of setting the hotspot in the atomic kms interface. When we
> > > (virtualized drivers) are using the native cursor we need to know not only the image  
> > 
> > Could you clarify what is "native cursor" here?
> > I guess it is the host window system pointer's cursor?  
> 
> Right, exactly. I'm a little hesitant to call it "host" because it gets tricky in
> remote scenarios, where the host is some ESXi server but the local machine is the
> one that's actually interacting with the guest. So it's the cursor of the machine
> where the guest screen is displayed.
> 
> 
> > > Now, where the disagreements come from is from the fact that all virtualized drivers
> > > do not implement the atomic KMS cursor plane contract exactly as specified. In
> > > atomic kms with universal planes the "cursor" plane can be anything so asking for
> > > hotspot's for something that's not a cursor is a bit silly (but arguably so is
> > > calling it a cursor plane and then complaining that people expect cursor in it).
> > > 
> > > So the argument is that we can't put hotspot data into atomic kms without first
> > > rewriting all of the virtualized drivers cursor code to fix the underlying contract
> > > violation that they all commit. That would likely be a lot easier sell if not that
> > > gnome/kde don't put none cursor stuff in the cursor plane, so all this work is to
> > > fix breakages that seem to affect 0 of our users (and I completely understand that
> > > we'd still like all the drivers to be correct and unified in terms of their
> > > behaviour, I'm just saying it's a hard sell without something that we can point to
> > > and say "this fixes/improves things for our customers")   
> > 
> > What's the cost of making paravirtualized drivers honour the UAPI contract?
> > Can't you do that on the side of implementing these new hotspot
> > properties, with the little addition to allowing guest userspace to be
> > explicit about whether it supports commandeering or not?  
> 
> I'm reluctant here because "fixing" here seems to be a bit ephemeral as we move from
> one solution to the next. I'm happy to write a patch that's adding a
> DRM_CLIENT_CAP_VIRTUAL_CURSOR_AWARE flag and hiding the cursor plane in virtualized
> drivers for clients that advertise DRM_CLIENT_CAP_ATOMIC but not
> DRM_CLIENT_CAP_VIRTUAL_CURSOR_AWARE, but that doesn't solve Weston on virtualized
> drivers.

Mind, I have not talked about hiding cursor planes. I have talked
*only* about stopping commandeering cursor planes if guest userspace
does not indicate it is prepared for commandeering.

I don't understand how it does not "solve on Weston on virtualized
drivers". Can you explain what is not solved?

As far as I can see, it does solve Weston: it makes cursor plane
behaviour correct from KMS UAPI contract point of view. Anything that
is not quite optimal after that with cursor planes you can blame on
Weston not making use of additional optional features.

Cursor plane itself is an additional optional feature. Userspace has no
obligation to use one at all, but if it does, it better behave by the
UAPI contract.

> I feel like that's a larger discussion. One that we need to have in general - it's
> about standardising on behaviour of userspace with virtualized drivers, e.g. on
> Weston even the most basic functionality of virtualized drivers which is resizing a
> window doesn't work correctly (virtualized drivers send drm_kms_helper_hotplug_event
> which sends a HOTPLUG=1 event with a changed preferred width/height but Weston
> doesn't seem to resize the fb on them which results in Weston not resizing to the
> new size of the window) or even considering the suggested_x and suggested_y
> properties. It seems like we might need to have a wider discussion on standardising
> those common issues on virtualized drivers because currently, I'm guessing, that
> apart from Gnome and KDE most compositors are completely broken on virtualized
> drivers.

You say "broken", I say "not implemented yet". *Those* problems are
Weston's own problems. They are new features that require explicit
support in Weston. No driver should try to implement those behind guest
userspace back.

This "not resizing" is not at all the same as the cursor plane
commandeering. Weston not supporting KMS-induced resizing does not
silently result in fundamentally incorrect behaviour. The CRTC size
remains the same, and nothing is actually broken. Only the end user
cannot seem to resize the viewer window, but everything works fine
otherwise. OTOH, when the VM stack commandeers the cursor plane without
permission, it breaks things so bad that user interaction is near
impossible. And it's a violation of the KMS UAPI contract.

If we are looking at things virtual drivers make strange, another thing
is that Weston is not expecting KMS pageflips to complete always
immediately regardless of the programmed refresh rate and "hardware"
refresh cycle phase. It is only luck that Weston does not end up in a
busy-loop updating the screen on virtual drivers, not intentional. We
can have a similar discussion there, are KMS drivers in general allowed
to complete atomic flips always immediately even if userspace asks for
vsync'd flips, or does it require explicit userspace opt-in.

> I'd prefer not blocking fixing hotspots until all those issues are resolved so if we
> can agree on what we'd like to fix before hotspots go in, that'd be great.

I think you are confusing things here. In my mind there is no doubt
about the KMS UAPI contract on cursor planes: commandeering is not
allowed. You have to add new UAPI to allow the VM stack to commandeer
cursor planes, and guest userspace must opt-in for that.

How you design that is up to you. Maybe a new client cap, or maybe you
inspect every atomic commit did the userspace set the hotspot
properties this time or not. The main thing is that this has been
thought about and documented.

I really do not see why adding that detail is so big deal, while not
adding that will leave virtual drivers fundamentally broken (incorrect
behaviour resulting from violating the KMS UAPI contract) for cursor
planes.

-----

Maybe we need to take another step back. Why are virtual drivers
specifically DRM KMS drivers? Was the idea not that if virtual drivers
pretend to be KMS drivers, we would not need to patch userspace? But
now we need to patch userspace anyway, so why bother with KMS and its
design limitations that are well appropriate for hardware drivers but
not for virtual drivers? If you had your own winsys virtualization
protocol, you could do so much more than KMS is ever going to allow
you, and so much better.

Or just, you know, use RDP, VNC, and whatnot there already exists.

Why KMS?

That's probably obvious to you, but not me.

I would also like to point out that I am not a kernel developer and I
have no NAK/veto rights on any kernel patches. I can only explain how
things look like from userspace perspective.

I suspect there is nothing more I can say. Those were my opinions, but
the decisions are up to kernel maintainers. Hence, I can agree to
disagree with you.

Thanks,
pq
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