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Diffstat (limited to 'Documentation/ioctl/botching-up-ioctls.txt')
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diff --git a/Documentation/ioctl/botching-up-ioctls.txt b/Documentation/ioctl/botching-up-ioctls.txt new file mode 100644 index 000000000..45fe78c58 --- /dev/null +++ b/Documentation/ioctl/botching-up-ioctls.txt @@ -0,0 +1,219 @@ +(How to avoid) Botching up ioctls +================================= + +From: http://blog.ffwll.ch/2013/11/botching-up-ioctls.html + +By: Daniel Vetter, Copyright © 2013 Intel Corporation + +One clear insight kernel graphics hackers gained in the past few years is that +trying to come up with a unified interface to manage the execution units and +memory on completely different GPUs is a futile effort. So nowadays every +driver has its own set of ioctls to allocate memory and submit work to the GPU. +Which is nice, since there's no more insanity in the form of fake-generic, but +actually only used once interfaces. But the clear downside is that there's much +more potential to screw things up. + +To avoid repeating all the same mistakes again I've written up some of the +lessons learned while botching the job for the drm/i915 driver. Most of these +only cover technicalities and not the big-picture issues like what the command +submission ioctl exactly should look like. Learning these lessons is probably +something every GPU driver has to do on its own. + + +Prerequisites +------------- + +First the prerequisites. Without these you have already failed, because you +will need to add a a 32-bit compat layer: + + * Only use fixed sized integers. To avoid conflicts with typedefs in userspace + the kernel has special types like __u32, __s64. Use them. + + * Align everything to the natural size and use explicit padding. 32-bit + platforms don't necessarily align 64-bit values to 64-bit boundaries, but + 64-bit platforms do. So we always need padding to the natural size to get + this right. + + * Pad the entire struct to a multiple of 64-bits - the structure size will + otherwise differ on 32-bit versus 64-bit. Having a different structure size + hurts when passing arrays of structures to the kernel, or if the kernel + checks the structure size, which e.g. the drm core does. + + * Pointers are __u64, cast from/to a uintprt_t on the userspace side and + from/to a void __user * in the kernel. Try really hard not to delay this + conversion or worse, fiddle the raw __u64 through your code since that + diminishes the checking tools like sparse can provide. + + +Basics +------ + +With the joys of writing a compat layer avoided we can take a look at the basic +fumbles. Neglecting these will make backward and forward compatibility a real +pain. And since getting things wrong on the first attempt is guaranteed you +will have a second iteration or at least an extension for any given interface. + + * Have a clear way for userspace to figure out whether your new ioctl or ioctl + extension is supported on a given kernel. If you can't rely on old kernels + rejecting the new flags/modes or ioctls (since doing that was botched in the + past) then you need a driver feature flag or revision number somewhere. + + * Have a plan for extending ioctls with new flags or new fields at the end of + the structure. The drm core checks the passed-in size for each ioctl call + and zero-extends any mismatches between kernel and userspace. That helps, + but isn't a complete solution since newer userspace on older kernels won't + notice that the newly added fields at the end get ignored. So this still + needs a new driver feature flags. + + * Check all unused fields and flags and all the padding for whether it's 0, + and reject the ioctl if that's not the case. Otherwise your nice plan for + future extensions is going right down the gutters since someone will submit + an ioctl struct with random stack garbage in the yet unused parts. Which + then bakes in the ABI that those fields can never be used for anything else + but garbage. + + * Have simple testcases for all of the above. + + +Fun with Error Paths +-------------------- + +Nowadays we don't have any excuse left any more for drm drivers being neat +little root exploits. This means we both need full input validation and solid +error handling paths - GPUs will die eventually in the oddmost corner cases +anyway: + + * The ioctl must check for array overflows. Also it needs to check for + over/underflows and clamping issues of integer values in general. The usual + example is sprite positioning values fed directly into the hardware with the + hardware just having 12 bits or so. Works nicely until some odd display + server doesn't bother with clamping itself and the cursor wraps around the + screen. + + * Have simple testcases for every input validation failure case in your ioctl. + Check that the error code matches your expectations. And finally make sure + that you only test for one single error path in each subtest by submitting + otherwise perfectly valid data. Without this an earlier check might reject + the ioctl already and shadow the codepath you actually want to test, hiding + bugs and regressions. + + * Make all your ioctls restartable. First X really loves signals and second + this will allow you to test 90% of all error handling paths by just + interrupting your main test suite constantly with signals. Thanks to X's + love for signal you'll get an excellent base coverage of all your error + paths pretty much for free for graphics drivers. Also, be consistent with + how you handle ioctl restarting - e.g. drm has a tiny drmIoctl helper in its + userspace library. The i915 driver botched this with the set_tiling ioctl, + now we're stuck forever with some arcane semantics in both the kernel and + userspace. + + * If you can't make a given codepath restartable make a stuck task at least + killable. GPUs just die and your users won't like you more if you hang their + entire box (by means of an unkillable X process). If the state recovery is + still too tricky have a timeout or hangcheck safety net as a last-ditch + effort in case the hardware has gone bananas. + + * Have testcases for the really tricky corner cases in your error recovery code + - it's way too easy to create a deadlock between your hangcheck code and + waiters. + + +Time, Waiting and Missing it +---------------------------- + +GPUs do most everything asynchronously, so we have a need to time operations and +wait for oustanding ones. This is really tricky business; at the moment none of +the ioctls supported by the drm/i915 get this fully right, which means there's +still tons more lessons to learn here. + + * Use CLOCK_MONOTONIC as your reference time, always. It's what alsa, drm and + v4l use by default nowadays. But let userspace know which timestamps are + derived from different clock domains like your main system clock (provided + by the kernel) or some independent hardware counter somewhere else. Clocks + will mismatch if you look close enough, but if performance measuring tools + have this information they can at least compensate. If your userspace can + get at the raw values of some clocks (e.g. through in-command-stream + performance counter sampling instructions) consider exposing those also. + + * Use __s64 seconds plus __u64 nanoseconds to specify time. It's not the most + convenient time specification, but it's mostly the standard. + + * Check that input time values are normalized and reject them if not. Note + that the kernel native struct ktime has a signed integer for both seconds + and nanoseconds, so beware here. + + * For timeouts, use absolute times. If you're a good fellow and made your + ioctl restartable relative timeouts tend to be too coarse and can + indefinitely extend your wait time due to rounding on each restart. + Especially if your reference clock is something really slow like the display + frame counter. With a spec laywer hat on this isn't a bug since timeouts can + always be extended - but users will surely hate you if their neat animations + starts to stutter due to this. + + * Consider ditching any synchronous wait ioctls with timeouts and just deliver + an asynchronous event on a pollable file descriptor. It fits much better + into event driven applications' main loop. + + * Have testcases for corner-cases, especially whether the return values for + already-completed events, successful waits and timed-out waits are all sane + and suiting to your needs. + + +Leaking Resources, Not +---------------------- + +A full-blown drm driver essentially implements a little OS, but specialized to +the given GPU platforms. This means a driver needs to expose tons of handles +for different objects and other resources to userspace. Doing that right +entails its own little set of pitfalls: + + * Always attach the lifetime of your dynamically created resources to the + lifetime of a file descriptor. Consider using a 1:1 mapping if your resource + needs to be shared across processes - fd-passing over unix domain sockets + also simplifies lifetime management for userspace. + + * Always have O_CLOEXEC support. + + * Ensure that you have sufficient insulation between different clients. By + default pick a private per-fd namespace which forces any sharing to be done + explictly. Only go with a more global per-device namespace if the objects + are truly device-unique. One counterexample in the drm modeset interfaces is + that the per-device modeset objects like connectors share a namespace with + framebuffer objects, which mostly are not shared at all. A separate + namespace, private by default, for framebuffers would have been more + suitable. + + * Think about uniqueness requirements for userspace handles. E.g. for most drm + drivers it's a userspace bug to submit the same object twice in the same + command submission ioctl. But then if objects are shareable userspace needs + to know whether it has seen an imported object from a different process + already or not. I haven't tried this myself yet due to lack of a new class + of objects, but consider using inode numbers on your shared file descriptors + as unique identifiers - it's how real files are told apart, too. + Unfortunately this requires a full-blown virtual filesystem in the kernel. + + +Last, but not Least +------------------- + +Not every problem needs a new ioctl: + + * Think hard whether you really want a driver-private interface. Of course + it's much quicker to push a driver-private interface than engaging in + lengthy discussions for a more generic solution. And occasionally doing a + private interface to spearhead a new concept is what's required. But in the + end, once the generic interface comes around you'll end up maintainer two + interfaces. Indefinitely. + + * Consider other interfaces than ioctls. A sysfs attribute is much better for + per-device settings, or for child objects with fairly static lifetimes (like + output connectors in drm with all the detection override attributes). Or + maybe only your testsuite needs this interface, and then debugfs with its + disclaimer of not having a stable ABI would be better. + +Finally, the name of the game is to get it right on the first attempt, since if +your driver proves popular and your hardware platforms long-lived then you'll +be stuck with a given ioctl essentially forever. You can try to deprecate +horrible ioctls on newer iterations of your hardware, but generally it takes +years to accomplish this. And then again years until the last user able to +complain about regressions disappears, too. |