[PATCH 00/12] drm/panic: Split into core and helpers

Thu Aug 20 10:49:36 PDT 2026

On 18/08/2026 14:27, Thomas Zimmermann wrote:
> Split DRM's current panic handling into a core and a helper module.
> The core is still part of DRM's core library. The panic helpers are
> part of DRM's KMS helper module (for now).
> 
> The motivation behind this series is to get panic handling's drawing
> code out of the DRM core. At some point it should share a single
> module with DRM's other drawing and format conversion.
> 
> With the series applied, panic hanlding follows DRM's established
> design pattern of having a DRM core interface with an dedicated
> implementation in each driver. Drivers share common code in helper
> modules. For panic handling, the DRM core still contains the panic
> entry points, the parameters and the debugfs interface. All drawing
> is now located in the panic helpers.
> 
> Patches 1 to 4 improve several issues in the current panic code. It
> makes sense to fix them before moving the core around.
> 
> Patches 5 to 8 put handling of all panic state and locking into a
> single place, drm_panic_display_panic_screen(). It is maintained by
> panic handling's DRM core code. This also enables the test cases to
> work more independently from the kernel's configuration.
> 
> Patches 9 to 11 split the panic-handling code into the core and panic
> helpers. The former maintain all state, locking and public interfaces.
> The latter handles drawing and details of the involved framebuffers.
> 
> DRM devices that offer panic handling provide a single callback, struct
> drm_plane_funcs.display_panic_screen. A new initializer macro makes it
> point to the existing panic-drawing implementation. Hence there's no
> change in features or functionality. If panic handling is configured
> off, it all clears out to NULL.
> 
> Patch 12 reworks the test cases slighly, so that they can be build as
> a separate module. Do 'modprobe drm_panic_helper_test' to run them.
> 
> Tested under bochs with debugfs and test cases.

Overall the series looks good to me, and I like the split between the 
helper and the core.
I would just drop the first two patches, as I don't see much difference 
between static allocation or kmalloc() at init, and I think that 
memset() the buffers to 0 is not useful in this case.

Best regards,

-- 

Jocelyn
> 
> Future directions:
> 
> - Panic handling shares some drawing code with format conversion and
> clients. There's even more drawing code in vkms. Later series' can
> attempt to unify and harmonize all these implementations in a single
> draw module.
> 
> - The drawing helper drm_plane_helper_display_panic_screen() still
> implements various access schemes (map, set_pixel, memcpy) in a single
> function. It could be split up into specifialized helpers.
> 
> - If we ever need a driver-specific helper, it is now possible to
> implement a custom version of display_panic_screen.
> 
> Thomas Zimmermann (12):
>    drm/panic: Allocate QR-code buffers statically
>    drm/panic: Make allocation of zlib workspace more robust
>    drm/panic: Return -EINVAL if font is not available
>    drm/panic: Return errno codes if panic output fails
>    drm/panic: Pass colors to draw_panic_dispatch()
>    drm/panic: Pass global module parameters to drm_panic_dispatch()
>    drm/panic: Retry in dispatch function if panic output fails
>    drm/panic: Split draw_panic_plane()
>    drm/panic: Display panic screen via per-plane callback
>    drm/panic: Internalize panic locking in DRM core and helpers
>    drm/panic: Move panic display code into helper library
>    drm/panic: Compile KUnit tests as module
> 
>   Documentation/gpu/drm-kms-helpers.rst         |  11 +-
>   Documentation/gpu/drm-kms.rst                 |   3 +
>   MAINTAINERS                                   |  11 +-
>   drivers/gpu/drm/Kconfig                       |   5 +
>   drivers/gpu/drm/Kconfig.debug                 |   1 +
>   drivers/gpu/drm/Makefile                      |   3 +-
>   .../amd/display/amdgpu_dm/amdgpu_dm_plane.c   |   2 +
>   drivers/gpu/drm/ast/ast_mode.c                |   2 +
>   drivers/gpu/drm/drm_atomic_helper.c           |   2 +-
>   drivers/gpu/drm/drm_crtc_internal.h           |   2 -
>   drivers/gpu/drm/drm_drv.c                     |   3 +-
>   drivers/gpu/drm/drm_kms_helper_common.c       |  14 +
>   drivers/gpu/drm/drm_panic.c                   | 914 +----------------
>   drivers/gpu/drm/drm_panic_helper.c            | 915 ++++++++++++++++++
>   ...drm_panic_qr.rs => drm_panic_helper_qr.rs} |   4 +-
>   drivers/gpu/drm/drm_panic_internal.h          |  59 ++
>   drivers/gpu/drm/hyperv/hyperv_drm_modeset.c   |   2 +
>   drivers/gpu/drm/i915/display/i9xx_plane.c     |   3 +
>   .../drm/i915/display/skl_universal_plane.c    |   4 +
>   drivers/gpu/drm/imx/ipuv3/ipuv3-plane.c       |   2 +
>   drivers/gpu/drm/mgag200/mgag200_drv.h         |   4 +-
>   drivers/gpu/drm/nouveau/dispnv50/wndw.c       |   2 +
>   .../gpu/drm/renesas/rcar-du/rcar_du_plane.c   |   2 +
>   .../drm/renesas/shmobile/shmob_drm_plane.c    |   2 +
>   drivers/gpu/drm/sysfb/drm_sysfb_helper.h      |   4 +-
>   drivers/gpu/drm/sysfb/vesadrm.c               |   1 +
>   drivers/gpu/drm/tests/Makefile                |   1 +
>   ...m_panic_test.c => drm_panic_helper_test.c} |  65 +-
>   drivers/gpu/drm/tidss/tidss_plane.c           |   2 +
>   drivers/gpu/drm/tiny/bochs.c                  |   4 +-
>   drivers/gpu/drm/virtio/virtgpu_plane.c        |   2 +
>   include/drm/drm_mode_config.h                 |   4 +-
>   include/drm/drm_modeset_helper_vtables.h      |  11 +-
>   include/drm/drm_panic.h                       | 117 +--
>   include/drm/drm_panic_helper.h                |  40 +
>   include/drm/drm_plane.h                       |  57 ++
>   rust/bindings/bindings_helper.h               |   4 +-
>   37 files changed, 1253 insertions(+), 1031 deletions(-)
>   create mode 100644 drivers/gpu/drm/drm_panic_helper.c
>   rename drivers/gpu/drm/{drm_panic_qr.rs => drm_panic_helper_qr.rs} (99%)
>   create mode 100644 drivers/gpu/drm/drm_panic_internal.h
>   rename drivers/gpu/drm/tests/{drm_panic_test.c => drm_panic_helper_test.c} (80%)
>   create mode 100644 include/drm/drm_panic_helper.h
> 
> 
> base-commit: dc462ab791b686c48545c160ecc81be64f77a846
> prerequisite-patch-id: c67e5d886a47b7d0266d81100837557fda34cb24
> prerequisite-patch-id: a5a973e527c88a5b47053d7a72aefe0b550197cb
> prerequisite-patch-id: b9adc9622920a3e70168e672c2c92795b3e3a106
> prerequisite-patch-id: 5030de433a01c2e99056cadb676a8e2ba35f055a