Hi All,
I have recently noticed a flaw in the design of linux drivers for SuperIO
chips.
I have a dual core board with two SuperIO chips.
Winbond W83627DFG: watchdog/w83627hf_wdt, hwmon/w83627ehf
Fintek F81216:
The existing driver for the currently supported SuperIO chip is split
into two kernel modules each with its own private IO lock.
If I continue this model and implement drivers to use the Fintek F81216
watchdog and the Winbond W83627DFG GPIO then I end up with more private IO
locks and more potential to get a clash when two or more drivers are
trying to access the same ports at the same time.
What is needed for SuperIO chips is a common way of locking the port
resource while the SuperIO chip is being accessed. A single common io_lock
would be the first and simplest approach. This is at least safe unlike the
current situation.
A better and longer term solution would be to update all the affected
drivers to use the existing recource allocation system for the SuperIO
ports (usually 0x2E/2F and 0x4E/4F) to reserve the port while it is in
use.
If this is considered too slow/complex and/or too much work then an
alternative SuperIO port locking system may be need that dynamically
provides locks for a specified SuperIO port address. A driver for a
SuperIO chip would request a lock for the desired port address during
initialisation and free it up on exit. If scanning for a SuperIO chip,
the port lock would be requested and then freed for each port scanned,
untill the IO chip is located. This would involve minimal changes
to the existing drivers without single treading access to SuperIO chips on
different ports.
If any of you think that this needs a wider ordiance, please forward to
the appropriate mailing lists.
Please CC me on any followups.
Regards
Mark Fortescue.
mark @ mtfhpc . demon . co . uk
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