Massive log spam loading modules on ARM after 3.2-rc5 (regression)

[Russell King - ARM Linux]

On Thu, Dec 15, 2011 at 10:26:33AM +0100, Uwe Kleine-König wrote:
> On Wed, Dec 14, 2011 at 04:51:33PM -0500, Nick Bowler wrote:
> > The message only seem to get printed at module load time.  Other than
> > the noise, things _seem_ to be working.  Nevertheless, it's a regression
> > introduced after 3.2-rc5 by the following commit:
> > 
> >   de66a979012dbc66b1ec0125795a3f79ee667b8a is the first bad commit
> >   commit de66a979012dbc66b1ec0125795a3f79ee667b8a
> >   Author: Uwe Kleine-König <u.kleine-koenig at pengutronix.de>
> >   Date:   Mon Dec 5 09:39:59 2011 +0100
> > 
> >       ARM: 7187/1: fix unwinding for XIP kernels
> > 
> >       The linker places the unwind tables in readonly sections. So when using
> >       an XIP kernel these are located in ROM and cannot be modified.
> >       For that reason the current approach to convert the relative offsets in
> >       the unwind index to absolute addresses early in the boot process doesn't
> >       work with XIP.
> > 
> >       The offsets in the unwind index section are signed 31 bit numbers and
> >       the structs are sorted by this offset. So it first has offsets between
> >       0x40000000 and 0x7fffffff (i.e. the negative offsets) and then offsets
> >       between 0x00000000 and 0x3fffffff. When seperating these two blocks the
> >       numbers are sorted even when interpreting the offsets as unsigned longs.
> > 
> >       So determine the first non-negative entry once and track that using the
> >       new origin pointer. The actual bisection can then use a plain unsigned
> >       long comparison. The only thing that makes the new bisection more
> >       complicated is that the offsets are relative to their position in the
> >       index section, so the key to search needs to be adapted accordingly in
> >       each step.
> > 
> >       Moreover several consts are added to catch future writes and rename the
> >       member "addr" of struct unwind_idx to "addr_offset" to better match the
> >       new semantic. (This has the additional benefit of breaking eventual
> >       users at compile time to make them aware of the change.)
> > 
> >       In my tests the new algorithm was a tad faster than the original and has
> >       the additional upside of not needing the initial conversion and so saves
> >       some boot time and it's possible to unwind even earlier.
> > 
> >       Acked-by: Catalin Marinas <catalin.marinas at arm.com>
> >       Acked-by: Nicolas Pitre <nico at fluxnic.net>
> >       Signed-off-by: Uwe Kleine-König <u.kleine-koenig at pengutronix.de>
> >       Signed-off-by: Russell King <rmk+kernel at arm.linux.org.uk>
> > 
> >   :040000 040000 9c4363228515808d71dac84a4a16e0aa0cf4ceaa 65b80d4e51fabf0a3142a880be795f4b38f4d9fe M	arch
> > 
> > I am *not* using XIP.  Reverting this commit resolves the issue.
> > 
> > Let me know if you need any more info,
> Can you provide me your .config please? I cannot reproduce your problems
> with modprobe on an i.MX28 based tx28 machine.
> 
> Russell, maybe this makes you a bit less annoyed?

Why should it?

1. Your change is totally unaffected by whether XIP is being used or not,
   so this is irrelevant.
2. You plainly said in your previous message (and I quote) "IMHO this is
   merge window material even though it has "fix" in the title.".

The fact of the matter is that you _never_ said that you didn't consider
your patch -rc material - and that alone is what I'm complaining at you
about.  It is _YOUR_ responsibility to indicate where a patch should be
applied.  You failed to do that.

Don't expect others to have a magical crystal ball to be able to see into
your mind to find out where you intended your patch to be applied.  It
doesn't work like that.  You have to state that - especially if it is a
'fix' patch but is _not_ supposed to go into -rc.