Re: [External] Re: [PATCH 3/3] Revert "e1000e: Add handshake with the CSME to support S0ix"

[Mark Pearson <markpearson@lenovo.com>]

On 2021-12-01 11:38, Ruinskiy, Dima wrote:
> On 30/11/2021 17:52, Mark Pearson wrote:
>> Hi Sasha
>>
>> On 2021-11-28 08:23, Sasha Neftin wrote:
>>> On 11/22/2021 18:19, Kai-Heng Feng wrote:
>>>> This reverts commit 3e55d231716ea361b1520b801c6778c4c48de102.
>>>>
>>>> Bugzilla:
>>>> https://bugzilla.kernel.org/show_bug.cgi?id=214821>>>>>
>>>> Signed-off-by: Kai-Heng Feng <kai.heng.feng@canonical.com>
>>>> ---
>> <snip>
>>>>
>>> Hello Kai-Heng,
>>> I believe it is the wrong approach. Reverting this patch will put
>>> corporate systems in an unpredictable state. SW will perform s0ix flow
>>> independent to CSME. (The CSME firmware will continue run
>>> independently.) LAN controller could be in an unknown state.
>>> Please, afford us to continue to debug the problem (it is could be
>>> incredible complexity)
>>>
>>> You always can skip the s0ix flow on problematic corporate systems by
>>> using privilege flag: ethtool --set-priv-flags enp0s31f6 s0ix-enabled
>>> off
>>>
>>> Also, there is no impact on consumer systems.
>>> Sasha
>>
>> I know we've discussed this offline, and your team are working on the
>> correct fix but I wanted to check based on your comments above that "it
>> was complex". I thought, and maybe misunderstood, that it was going to
>> be relatively simple to disable the change for older CPUs - which is the
>> biggest problem caused by the patch.
>>
>> Right now it's breaking networking for folk who happen to have a vPro
>> Tigerlake (and I believe even potentially Cometlake or older) system. I
>> think the impact of that could potentially be quite severe.
>>
>> I understand not wanting to revert the change for the ADL platforms I
>> believe this is targeting and to fix this instead - but your comment
>> made me nervous that Linux users on older Intel based platforms are in
>> for a long and painful wait - it is likely a lot of users....
>>
>> Can you or Dima confirm the fix for older platforms will be available
>> soon? I appreciate the ADL platform might take a bit more work and time
>> to get right.
>>
>> Thanks
>> Mark
>>
> Hi Mark,
> 
> What we currently see is that the issue manifests itself similarly on
> ADL and TGL platforms. Thus, the fix will likely be the same for both.
> 
> If we cannot find a proper fix soon, we will provide a workaround (for
> example by temporary disabling the feature on vPro platforms until we do
> have a fix).
> 
> This can be done without reverting the patch series, and I don't see
> much value in selectively disabling it for CML/TGL while leaving it on
> for ADL, unless our ongoing debug shows otherwise.
> 
Got it - thanks Dima.

As a note - the obvious advantage of selectively disabling for CML/TGL
is there is a ton of those platforms out there in users hands, whereas
the ADL platforms won't be landing for a few more months (at least in
our case). I'm OK if the fixes take a touch longer with ADL (though
we'll want them soon so they have time to make it upstream and down into
the distro's) - but there's going to be a lot of unhappy Intel users as
soon as they start picking up the updates (that are landing in some
distro's) and finding that networking is broken. I'd expect TGL/CML to
be a priority...

Keep us posted when the fix is ready please.

Mark