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Nathan Lynch 43033bc62d powerpc/pseries: add RTAS work area allocator
Various pseries-specific RTAS functions take a temporary "work area"
parameter - a buffer in memory accessible to RTAS. Typically such
functions are passed the statically allocated rtas_data_buf buffer as
the argument. This buffer is protected by a global spinlock. So users
of rtas_data_buf cannot perform sleeping operations while accessing
the buffer.

Most RTAS functions that have a work area parameter can return a
status (-2/990x) that indicates that the caller should retry. Before
retrying, the caller may need to reschedule or sleep (see
rtas_busy_delay() for details). This combination of factors
leads to uncomfortable constructions like this:

	do {
		spin_lock(&rtas_data_buf_lock);
		rc = rtas_call(token, __pa(rtas_data_buf, ...);
		if (rc == 0) {
			/* parse or copy out rtas_data_buf contents */
		}
		spin_unlock(&rtas_data_buf_lock);
	} while (rtas_busy_delay(rc));

Another unfortunately common way of handling this is for callers to
blithely ignore the possibility of a -2/990x status and hope for the
best.

If users were allowed to perform blocking operations while owning a
work area, the programming model would become less tedious and
error-prone. Users could schedule away, sleep, or perform other
blocking operations without having to release and re-acquire
resources.

We could continue to use a single work area buffer, and convert
rtas_data_buf_lock to a mutex. But that would impose an unnecessarily
coarse serialization on all users. As awkward as the current design
is, it prevents longer running operations that need to repeatedly use
rtas_data_buf from blocking the progress of others.

There are more considerations. One is that while 4KB is fine for all
current in-kernel uses, some RTAS calls can take much smaller buffers,
and some (VPD, platform dumps) would likely benefit from larger
ones. Another is that at least one RTAS function (ibm,get-vpd)
has *two* work area parameters. And finally, we should expect the
number of work area users in the kernel to increase over time as we
introduce lockdown-compatible ABIs to replace less safe use cases
based on sys_rtas/librtas.

So a special-purpose allocator for RTAS work area buffers seems worth
trying.

Properties:

* The backing memory for the allocator is reserved early in boot in
  order to satisfy RTAS addressing requirements, and then managed with
  genalloc.
* Allocations can block, but they never fail (mempool-like).
* Prioritizes first-come, first-serve fairness over throughput.
* Early boot allocations before the allocator has been initialized are
  served via an internal static buffer.

Intended to replace rtas_data_buf. New code that needs RTAS work area
buffers should prefer this API.

Signed-off-by: Nathan Lynch <nathanl@linux.ibm.com>
Signed-off-by: Michael Ellerman <mpe@ellerman.id.au>
Link: https://lore.kernel.org/r/20230125-b4-powerpc-rtas-queue-v3-12-26929c8cce78@linux.ibm.com
2023-02-13 22:35:02 +11:00
arch powerpc/pseries: add RTAS work area allocator 2023-02-13 22:35:02 +11:00
block block-6.2-2022-12-29 2022-12-29 16:57:29 -08:00
certs certs: make system keyring depend on built-in x509 parser 2022-09-24 04:31:18 +09:00
crypto This update includes the following changes: 2022-12-14 12:31:09 -08:00
Documentation powerpc/pseries: Implement secvars for dynamic secure boot 2023-02-13 22:34:33 +11:00
drivers drm-fixes for 6.2-rc2 2023-01-01 11:11:13 -08:00
fs treewide: Convert del_timer*() to timer_shutdown*() 2022-12-25 13:38:09 -08:00
include Kbuild fixes for v6.2 2022-12-31 10:21:47 -08:00
init Kbuild updates for v6.2 2022-12-19 12:33:32 -06:00
io_uring io_uring: check for valid register opcode earlier 2022-12-23 06:40:32 -07:00
ipc Non-MM patches for 6.2-rc1. 2022-12-12 17:28:58 -08:00
kernel - Pass only an initialized perf event attribute to the LSM hook 2023-01-01 11:27:00 -08:00
lib kunit: alloc_string_stream_fragment error handling bug fix 2022-12-26 16:01:36 -07:00
LICENSES LICENSES: Add the copyleft-next-0.3.1 license 2022-11-08 15:44:01 +01:00
mm hugetlb: really allocate vma lock for all sharable vmas 2022-12-21 14:31:52 -08:00
net treewide: Convert del_timer*() to timer_shutdown*() 2022-12-25 13:38:09 -08:00
rust rust: types: add Opaque type 2022-12-04 01:59:16 +01:00
samples Char/Misc driver changes for 6.2-rc1 2022-12-16 03:49:24 -08:00
scripts fixdep: remove unneeded <stdarg.h> inclusion 2022-12-30 17:26:19 +09:00
security integrity/powerpc: Support loading keys from PLPKS 2023-02-13 22:34:44 +11:00
sound ALSA: hda/hdmi: Static PCM mapping again with AMD HDMI codecs 2022-12-28 14:05:06 +01:00
tools selftests/powerpc: Add automatically allocating read_file 2023-02-09 23:56:45 +11:00
usr usr/gen_init_cpio.c: remove unnecessary -1 values from int file 2022-10-03 14:21:44 -07:00
virt Merge branch 'kvm-late-6.1-fixes' into HEAD 2022-12-28 07:19:14 -05:00
.clang-format iommufd for 6.2 2022-12-14 09:15:43 -08:00
.cocciconfig
.get_maintainer.ignore get_maintainer: add Alan to .get_maintainer.ignore 2022-08-20 15:17:44 -07:00
.gitattributes .gitattributes: use 'dts' diff driver for dts files 2019-12-04 19:44:11 -08:00
.gitignore .gitignore: ignore *.rpm 2022-12-30 17:22:14 +09:00
.mailmap Non-MM patches for 6.2-rc1. 2022-12-12 17:28:58 -08:00
.rustfmt.toml rust: add .rustfmt.toml 2022-09-28 09:02:20 +02:00
COPYING COPYING: state that all contributions really are covered by this file 2020-02-10 13:32:20 -08:00
CREDITS MAINTAINERS: zram: zsmalloc: Add an additional co-maintainer 2022-12-15 16:37:49 -08:00
Kbuild Kbuild updates for v6.1 2022-10-10 12:00:45 -07:00
Kconfig kbuild: ensure full rebuild when the compiler is updated 2020-05-12 13:28:33 +09:00
MAINTAINERS block-6.2-2022-12-29 2022-12-29 16:57:29 -08:00
Makefile Linux 6.2-rc2 2023-01-01 13:53:16 -08:00
README Drop all 00-INDEX files from Documentation/ 2018-09-09 15:08:58 -06:00

Linux kernel
============

There are several guides for kernel developers and users. These guides can
be rendered in a number of formats, like HTML and PDF. Please read
Documentation/admin-guide/README.rst first.

In order to build the documentation, use ``make htmldocs`` or
``make pdfdocs``.  The formatted documentation can also be read online at:

    https://www.kernel.org/doc/html/latest/

There are various text files in the Documentation/ subdirectory,
several of them using the Restructured Text markup notation.

Please read the Documentation/process/changes.rst file, as it contains the
requirements for building and running the kernel, and information about
the problems which may result by upgrading your kernel.