On Fri, Aug 04, 2023 at 12:06:55PM -0500, Bjorn Helgaas wrote:
> [+cc Krzysztof]
>
> On Fri, Aug 04, 2023 at 12:35:13PM +0100, Russell King (Oracle) wrote:
> > So it seems this patch got applied, but it wasn't Cc'd to
> > linux-arm-kernel or anyone else, so those of us with platforms never
> > had a chance to comment on it.
> >
> > *** This change causes a regression to working setups. ***
> >
> > It appears that the *only* reason this patch was proposed is to stop a
> > kernel developer receiving problem reports from a set of users, but
> > completely ignores that there is another group of users where this works
> > fine - and thus the addition of this patch causes working setups to
> > regress.
> >
> > Because one is being bothered with problem reports is not a reason to
> > mark a driver broken - and especially not doing so in a way that those
> > who may be affected don't get an opportunity to comment on the patch!
> > Also, there is _zero_ information provided on what the reported problems
> > actually are, so no one else can guess what these issues are.
> >
> > However, given that there are working setups and this change causes
> > those to regress, it needs to be reverted.
> >
> > For example, I have an Atheros PCIe WiFi card in an Armada 388 Clearfog
> > platform, and this works fine.
> >
> > Uwe has a SATA controller for a bunch of disks in an Armada 370 based
> > NAS platform that is connected to PCIe, and removing PCIe support
> > effectively makes his platform utterly useless.
> >
> > Please revert this patch.
>
> Sorry for the inconvenience.
>
> I was under the mistaken impression that making the driver depend on
> CONFIG_BROKEN would keep the driver available but only if the user
> explicitly requested it, similar to how
> CONFIG_COMPILE_TEST works. But obviously that's not the case, so
> we'll revert the change.
CONFIG_BROKEN isn't something that can be enabled without editing
init/Kconfig, since the option does not have a prompt:
config BROKEN
bool
Marking something as "depends on BROKEN" prevents it appearing in
Kconfig, and thus makes it unselectable. It's effectively one step
away from deleting the code.
As we don't know what the problems were, I would not suggest updating
the Kconfig text - we don't know whether they were boot time crashes,
boot hangs, or failures for the link to come up with the device making
some PCIe devices undetectable.
Given that it does work fine for Uwe and myself, it suggests it's the
latter - and that could be down to the PCIe devices themselves, or it
could be a platform hardware issue.
--
RMK's Patch system: https://www.armlinux.org.uk/developer/patches/
FTTP is here! 80Mbps down 10Mbps up. Decent connectivity at last!
