Hello, This patch series fixes mishandling of the MEDIA_PAD_FL_MUST_CONNECT flag. The issue has been introduced in commit ae219872834a ("media: mc: entity: Rewrite media_pipeline_start()") when reworking the media controller pipeline validation code. It is known to cause crashes in the imx-mipi-csis driver (see [1]) and most likely affects multiple other drivers. Patch 1/7 and 2/7 fix the problem. Patches 3/7 to 7/7 fix an additional related issue affecting the imx8-isi driver. It is however not a regression introduced by commit ae219872834a. The problem causes a NULL pointer dereference when enabling streams if the pipeline is configured with the imx8-isi crossbar sink pad not being connected. Patch 3/7, initially submitted by Marek, fixes the issue in the imx8-isi driver itself. As the problem is very similar to what the MUST_CONNECT flag was designed to handled, I considered the bug to be better solved by using the MUST_CONNECT flag in the imx8-isi driver. This requires expanding the purpose of the flag (patch 6/7), after a few drive-by fixes and reworks (patches 4/7 and 5/7). Finally, patch 7/7 sets the MUST_CONNECT flag in the imx8-isi driver, effectively reverting the changes from patch 3/7. I have decided to still include patch 3/7 in the series, as in the even that the changes in patches 4/7 to 7/7 were to be reverted later (or simply require more discussions and new versions), patches 1/7 to 3/7 could be merged without delay and fix the issue for users. [1] https://lore.kernel.org/linux-media/7658a15a-80c5-219f-2477-2a94ba6c6ba1@xxxxxxxxxx Laurent Pinchart (6): media: mc: Add local pad to pipeline regardless of the link state media: mc: Fix flags handling when creating pad links media: mc: Add num_links flag to media_pad media: mc: Rename pad variable to clarify intent media: mc: Expand MUST_CONNECT flag to always require an enabled link media: nxp: imx8-isi: Mark all crossbar sink pads as MUST_CONNECT Marek Vasut (1): media: nxp: imx8-isi: Check whether crossbar pad is non-NULL before access .../media/mediactl/media-types.rst | 11 +-- drivers/media/mc/mc-entity.c | 93 ++++++++++++++----- .../platform/nxp/imx8-isi/imx8-isi-crossbar.c | 4 +- include/media/media-entity.h | 2 + 4 files changed, 78 insertions(+), 32 deletions(-) base-commit: 0dd3ee31125508cd67f7e7172247f05b7fd1753a -- Regards, Laurent Pinchart