Kconfig CONFIG_FB dependency regression

[Randy Dunlap]

On 2/3/22 19:21, Thinh Nguyen wrote:
> Arnd Bergmann wrote:
>> On Thu, Feb 3, 2022 at 12:55 AM Thinh Nguyen <Thinh.Nguyen at synopsys.com> wrote:
>>> Arnd Bergmann wrote:
>>>> On Wed, Feb 2, 2022 at 1:14 AM Thinh Nguyen <Thinh.Nguyen at synopsys.com> wrote:
>>>>> Fabio Estevam wrote:
>>>>
>>>> CONFIG_FB should not normally be needed for booting, so unless
>>>> you have a graphical application in your initramfs that requires the /dev/fb0
>>>> device to work, it is not supposed to make a difference.
>>>>
>>>
>>> I'm not sure, but it seems like the setup we have isn't the only one
>>> that needed it. Fabio also noted that the imx_v6_v7_defconfig also needs
>>> to have CONFIG_FB set.
>>
>> No, that one is different: the change for imx_v6_v7_defconfig was
>> done because they actually use a framebuffer console on some devices,
>> so the patch just adds the symbol to enable the drivers they are using.
>>
>> This is expected with my original patch that doesn't implicitly enable
>> the framebuffer layer any more. What is not expected is for the kernel
>> to hang during boot as you reported for your unidentified platform.
>>
>>>> Are there any other differences in your .config before and after the patch?
>>>> It's possible that you use some other driver that in turn depends on
>>>> CONFIG_FB. Does your machine have any graphical output device?
>>>> If yes, which driver do you use?
>>>
>>> I don't have the answer to those questions yet. Need more investigation.
>>> I'm new to this particular test setup.
>>
>> Do you mean you don't know if there is a screen attached to the system?
>>
> 
> It does have a graphical output device, but I didn't check what it is or
> what driver is driving it. I just notice that after the reported commit,
> something stopped working.
> 
>>>>
>>>> You may also want to make sure that you have 9d6366e743f3 ("drm:
>>>> fb_helper: improve CONFIG_FB dependency") in your kernel, which
>>>> fixes a minor problem with my original patch.
>>>>
>>>
>>> The issue also occurs in mainline, which has your minor fix commit
>>> above. The revert isn't clean for the latest kernel version. I also have
>>> to revert some of the changes along with CONFIG_FB. The revert looks
>>> more like this for the latest kernel:
>>>
>>> diff --git a/drivers/gpu/drm/Kconfig b/drivers/gpu/drm/Kconfig
>>> index b1f22e457fd0..7cbc733a8569 100644
>>> --- a/drivers/gpu/drm/Kconfig
>>> +++ b/drivers/gpu/drm/Kconfig
>>> @@ -118,8 +118,9 @@ config DRM_DEBUG_MODESET_LOCK
>>>
>>>  config DRM_FBDEV_EMULATION
>>>         bool "Enable legacy fbdev support for your modesetting driver"
>>> -       depends on DRM_KMS_HELPER
>>> -       depends on FB=y || FB=DRM_KMS_HELPER
>>> +       depends on DRM
>>> +       select DRM_KMS_HELPER
>>> +       select FB
>>>         select FB_CFB_FILLRECT
>>>         select FB_CFB_COPYAREA
>>>         select FB_CFB_IMAGEBLIT
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> I attached the configs for kernel v5.17-rc1. The "bad" config is without
>>> any revert, the "good" config is with the change above.
>>
>> Looking at the config, I see that this is for an x86 machine,
>> and you have the FB_EFI driver and EFI_EARLYCON enabled.
>>
>> What I suspec is going on is that you are looking at a screen rather
>> than a serial console, and the kernel doesn't actually hang but you
>> just don't see any more messages after the DRM driver takes
>> over from EFI_EARLYCON because there is no console driver.
>>
>> In this case, what you see is the intended behavior, not a bug.
>> If you want a graphical console in your system, you need to
>> enable the support for this in your config.
>>
> 
> It sounds like that's the case. Unfortunately I'm not familiar with this
> subsystem to say that's what happening. If there's nothing actually
> broken from review, we can ignore this email thread.

Hi,
I don't know of anything that is broken...

I am curious how CONFIG_FB_EFI came to be set when going from bad.config to
good.config.  Can you explain that?

thanks.
-- 
~Randy