Re: [PATCH v8 1/2] serial: core: fix baud rate fallback in uart_get_baud_rate()

[Hugo Villeneuve <hugo@hugovil.com>]

Hi Hui,

On Wed,  7 Oct 2026 09:47:17 +0000
Hui Peng <benquike@gmail.com> wrote:

> When uart_get_baud_rate() evaluates a requested baud rate against a port's
> supported limits [min, max], the retry loop operates as follows:
> 
>   try == 0: Evaluates the requested baud rate. If out of range and an old
>             termios is available, it switches termios to old.
>   try == 1: If old is also out of range (or unavailable), the fallback rule
>             at the end of the loop clips baud to [min, max - 1] and encodes
>             it into termios via tty_termios_encode_baud_rate(termios, baud,
>             baud).
>   try == 2: Evaluates baud = tty_termios_baud_rate(termios) for the newly
>             encoded clipped rate, which now satisfies min <= baud && baud
>             <= max and returns baud from within the loop body.

The loop terminates immediately after try == 1. I see that below even
you acknowledge that fact. This is confusing and it does not
properly describe the current behavior. You should instead write
something like:

     try == 2: no more action, the loop exit immediately

and adjust your other comments accordingly.


> However, because the current loop bound is for (try = 0; try < 2; try++),
> the loop terminates immediately after try == 1 without executing try == 2 to
> re-evaluate the clipped rate. Upon loop exit, the function hits WARN_ON(1)
> and returns 0, which triggers a fatal divide-by-zero (Oops: divide error)
> in uart_get_divisor():
> 
>   WARNING: drivers/tty/serial/serial_core.c:548 at uart_get_baud_rate+0x136/0x260
>   [ ... ]
>   divide error: 0000 [#1] PREEMPT SMP KASAN
> 
> Increase the loop retry limit in uart_get_baud_rate() from 2 to 3 iterations
> (try < 3) so that clipped fallback baud rates are re-evaluated in try == 2.
> 
> Tested in QEMU against Linux 7.3.0-rc3 by setting B4000000 on /dev/ttyS0 via
> tcsetattr(): on the unfixed kernel it triggers WARN_ON(1) and divide-by-zero
> Oops, whereas with this fix applied uart_get_baud_rate() smoothly falls back
> to 115200 without error.
> 
> Fixes: 091ea8e5d34e ("serial: core: prevent division by zero by always returning non-zero baud rate")
> Cc: stable@vger.kernel.org
> Assisted-by: LLM
> Signed-off-by: Hui Peng <benquike@gmail.com>
> ---
> Changes in v8:
> - Rewrote commit description to detail the step-by-step loop iteration
>   progression (try == 0, try == 1, try == 2) as requested by Ilpo Järvinen
>   and Greg Kroah-Hartman.
> 
>  drivers/tty/serial/serial_core.c | 2 +-
>  1 file changed, 1 insertion(+), 1 deletion(-)
> 
> diff --git a/drivers/tty/serial/serial_core.c b/drivers/tty/serial/serial_core.c
> index f91bcfa30113..6ed0195e6912 100644
> --- a/drivers/tty/serial/serial_core.c
> +++ b/drivers/tty/serial/serial_core.c
> @@ -470,7 +470,7 @@ unsigned int uart_get_baud_rate(struct uart_port *port, struct ktermios *termi
>  	 * Ask the low level driver to verify the baud rate if it can't
>  	 * then it will have encode_baud_rate set the Closet else .
>  	 */
> -	for (try = 0; try < 2; try++) {
> +	for (try = 0; try < 3; try++) {
>  		baud = tty_termios_baud_rate(termios);
> 
>  		/*
> -- 
> 2.47.3
> 


-- 
Hugo Villeneuve