On Fri, Apr 02, 2021 at 04:03:30PM -0700, Kees Cook wrote: > > relevant. It seems to me that the hw_counters 'struct attribute_group' > > should probably be its own kobj within both of these structures so they > > can have their own sysfs ops (unless there is some other way to do this > > that I am missing). Err, yes, every subclass of the attribute should be accompanied by a distinct kobject type to relay the show methods with typesafety, this is how this design pattern is intended to be used. If I understand your report properly the hw_stats_attribute is being assigned to a 'port_type' kobject and it only works by pure luck because the show/store happens to overlap between port and hsa attributes? > > I would appreciate someone else taking a look and seeing if I am off > > base or if there is an easier way to solve this. > > So, it seems that the reason for a custom kobj_type here is to use the > .release callback. Every kobject should be associated with a specific, fixed, attribute type. The purpose of the wrappers is to inject type safety so the attribute implementations know they are working on the right stuff. In turn, an attribute of a specific attribute type can only be injected into a kobject that has the matching type. This code is insane because it does this: hsag->attrs[i] = alloc_hsa(i, port_num, stats->names[i]); // This is port kobject struct kobject *kobj = &port->kobj; ret = sysfs_create_group(kobj, hsag); [..] // This is a struct device kobject struct kobject *kobj = &device->dev.kobj; ret = sysfs_create_group(kobj, hsag); Which is absolutely not allowed, you can't have a generic attribute handler and stuff it into two different types! Things MUST use the proper attribute subclass for what they are being attached to. The answer is that the setup_hw_stats_() for port and device must be split up and the attribute implementations for each of them have to subclass starting from the correct type. So we'd end up with two attributes for hw_stats struct port_hw_stats { struct port_attr attr; struct hw_stats_data data; }; struct device_hw_stats { struct device_attr attr; struct hw_stats_data data; }; And then two show/set functions that bounce through the correct types to the data. And so on. Jason