[PATCH 1/2] tty: serial: remove __init on pl011 console ops

[Haojian Zhuang]

On 7 February 2013 00:38, Russell King - ARM Linux
<linux at arm.linux.org.uk> wrote:
> On Wed, Feb 06, 2013 at 05:31:24PM +0100, Linus Walleij wrote:
>> On Wed, Feb 6, 2013 at 1:31 PM, Haojian Zhuang
>> <haojian.zhuang at linaro.org> wrote:
>>
>> CC Grant on this issue...
>>
>> > On 6 February 2013 19:52, Russell King - ARM Linux
>> > <linux at arm.linux.org.uk> wrote:
>> >> On Wed, Feb 06, 2013 at 07:47:14PM +0800, Haojian Zhuang wrote:
>> >>> If uart driver is probed defer, console_setup will be called later
>> >>> after __init && __initdata sections destroyed. And amba_console isn't
>> >>> defined in __init or __initdata section. So we needn't define
>> >>> pl011_console_setup() && pl011_console_get_options() in __init section.
>> >>
>> >> It sounds like there's a deeper problem here - if this driver being
>> >> deferred, why isn't it being retried after the pinctrl stuff gets
>> >> its driver registered?
>> >>
>> >> We've had bugs in this deferred probing before, I wouldn't be surprised
>> >> if there's more... and we should not be "fixing" drivers because of bugs
>> >> elsewhere.
>> >
>> > It retried if driver is being deferred. But those console setup
>> > functions are released
>> > since they're declared in __init section.
>> >
>> > rest_init()
>> >    --> creates kernel_init thread that could free __init section memory
>> >
>> > deferred_probe_initicall() creates a workqueue that is used to retry
>> > deferred probe
>> > function.
>> >
>> > I think that these two threads are competing.
>>
>> Now that is the *real* problem. The __init sections surely should
>> not be discarded until *after* all deferred probes are complete
>> and the deferral workqueue terminates.
>>
>> How about writing a patch to fix that instead? (If possible...)
>
> Well, we have the facilities to flush workqueues, so it should be possible.
>
> However, I'm just wondering if this shows that we _do_ need to get rid
> of a pile of __init marked functions as well as fixing this, thanks to
> the deferred probing we now have (maybe the whole __init thing becomes
> useless with deferred probing?)  There's nothing really to guarantee
> that the pinctrl stuff will be available by the time the init sections
> are discarded (it could be in a loadable module?) or indeed any other
> resources that might be necessary.
>
> I think in this regard, deferred probing has opened a similar can of
> worms which hotplug devices created (which eventually ended up with
> killing the __dev* marking).

At first, I considered to remove those __init functions. But it may seem
unreasonable.

Now I'm trying to reuse wait_for_device_probe() after do_initcalls(). Please
help to review.

Thanks
Haojian