Re: Please revert 5adc55da4a7758021bcc374904b0f8b076508a11 (PCI_MULTITHREAD_PROBE)

[Cornelia Huck <cornelia.huck@de.ibm.com>]

On Wed, 9 May 2007 09:18:10 -0700 (PDT),
david@lang.hm wrote:

> I'm not worried about notification to userspace, I'm worried about devices 
> getting registered during the async stage appearing in different orders on 
> different boots due to different timeings.

Ah, now I think I understand what you mean. You're talking about stuff
like block devices or net devices, right?

> 
> if you can identify the device well enough to register it quickly then the 
> approach that Linus proposed works well, which is
> 
> sync probe, identify devices, register devices
> async initialize devices
> wait for all async to complete
> 
> however I'm talking about cases where you can't fully identify the devices 
> (at least not well enough to register them with the kernel) and am saying 
> that doing
> 
> sync probe
> async initialize device, register device
> wait for all async to complete
> 
> results in unpredictable device ordering, but if instead you did
> 
> sync probe
> async initialize device
> sync wait for all async to complete, register device
> 
> you can get back to predictable ordering

Hm, so that sound like a case for a distinct setup() routine:

1. bus calls ->probe(), which return synchronously
2. bus calls ->probe_async() for all devices (optional)
3. bus waits for all probes to finish
4. bus calls ->setup() for all devices (which does the registering)

(->setup() can but need not be sync, although it should be for your
case)

Note that ordering is not guaranteed on hotpluggable busses anyway, and
if you use ->setup() as a function that may or may not be called later
on, there's no ordering guarantee either. (Unless the bus/device driver
implements something to that effect, or you have udev rules in place.)