[PATCH 00/19] mtd: spi-nor: Enhance software protection

Miquel Raynal miquel.raynal at bootlin.com
Fri Nov 14 09:53:01 PST 2025


Hello,

As recently raised on the mailing-list (link below), it seems that the
"locking" support in SPI NOR could benefit from some enhancements. As I
myself had to dig into it recently, here is a proposal.

First issue that I see, the MEMLOCK ioctl is not behaving correctly
in some cases, as addressed in:

    mtd: spi-nor: swp: Improve locking user experience

Then there is no clear explanation of the shortcuts taken by the kernel
in terms of uAPI, so there is an attempt to list them in:

    mtd: spi-nor: swp: Explain the MEMLOCK ioctl implementation behaviour

Plus, Tudor also asked if we could cover locking in the testing
procedure, which is done in:

    mtd: spi-nor: Add steps for testing locking support

In order to simplify this procedure, and because it got very helpful
during my testing/development, I want to propose additions to the
debugfs output:

    mtd: spi-nor: debugfs: Add locking support TODO: make the captures again

Finally, I am providing an implementation for the complement (CMP)
feature in order to allow finer control of the regions locked. This
feature is for instance available on Winbond chips:

    [core] mtd: spi-nor: swp: Add support for the complement feature
    [doc]  mtd: spi-nor: Add steps for testing locking with CMP
    [use]  mtd: spi-nor: winbond: Add CMP locking support

Disclaimer: it was much less straightforward than I initially thought to
get the CMP feature working correctly. I tested it with as much focus as
I could, and I am improving the test coverage for the new cases, I am
also providing extra test cases in the metadata of the commit (which do
not make sense to test for chip additions, but may be sensible show when
making core additions like this one), but honestly there are so many
possibilities, I may still be missing corner cases. I hope this will
anyway be helpful to others!

All the other patches are misc improvements or style fixes which I faced
and fixed during my development.

Link: https://lore.kernel.org/linux-mtd/92e99a96-5582-48a5-a4f9-e9b33fcff171@linux.dev/

Signed-off-by: Miquel Raynal <miquel.raynal at bootlin.com>
---
Miquel Raynal (19):
      mtd: spi-nor: debugfs: Fix the flags list
      mtd: spi-nor: swp: Improve locking user experience
      mtd: spi-nor: Improve opcodes documentation
      mtd: spi-nor: debugfs: Align variable access with the rest of the file
      mtd: spi-nor: debugfs: Enhance output
      mtd: spi-nor: swp: Explain the MEMLOCK ioctl implementation behaviour
      mtd: spi-nor: swp: Clarify a comment
      mtd: spi-nor: swp: Use a pointer for SR instead of a single byte
      mtd: spi-nor: swp: Create a helper that writes SR, CR and checks
      mtd: spi-nor: swp: Rename a mask
      mtd: spi-nor: swp: Create a TB intermediate variable
      mtd: spi-nor: swp: Create helpers for building the SR register
      mtd: spi-nor: swp: Simplify checking the locked/unlocked range
      mtd: spi-nor: swp: Cosmetic changes
      mtd: spi-nor: debugfs: Add locking support
      mtd: spi-nor: Add steps for testing locking support
      mtd: spi-nor: swp: Add support for the complement feature
      mtd: spi-nor: Add steps for testing locking with CMP
      mtd: spi-nor: winbond: Add CMP locking support

 Documentation/driver-api/mtd/spi-nor.rst | 154 +++++++++++++++
 drivers/mtd/spi-nor/core.c               |  68 +++++++
 drivers/mtd/spi-nor/core.h               |   9 +
 drivers/mtd/spi-nor/debugfs.c            |  51 ++++-
 drivers/mtd/spi-nor/swp.c                | 313 +++++++++++++++++++++++--------
 drivers/mtd/spi-nor/winbond.c            |  18 +-
 include/linux/mtd/spi-nor.h              |   5 +-
 7 files changed, 533 insertions(+), 85 deletions(-)
---
base-commit: 1f046901101e2933086b76b1e75b0b53a8a39bc0
change-id: 20251114-winbond-v6-18-rc1-spi-nor-swp-865d36f4f695

Best regards,
-- 
Miquel Raynal <miquel.raynal at bootlin.com>




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