Adding upstream version 5.10.209.upstream/5.10.209upstream

Signed-off-by: Daniel Baumann <daniel.baumann@progress-linux.org>

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+===================
+Fallback mechanisms
+===================
+
+A fallback mechanism is supported to allow to overcome failures to do a direct
+filesystem lookup on the root filesystem or when the firmware simply cannot be
+installed for practical reasons on the root filesystem. The kernel
+configuration options related to supporting the firmware fallback mechanism are:
+
+  * CONFIG_FW_LOADER_USER_HELPER: enables building the firmware fallback
+    mechanism. Most distributions enable this option today. If enabled but
+    CONFIG_FW_LOADER_USER_HELPER_FALLBACK is disabled, only the custom fallback
+    mechanism is available and for the request_firmware_nowait() call.
+  * CONFIG_FW_LOADER_USER_HELPER_FALLBACK: force enables each request to
+    enable the kobject uevent fallback mechanism on all firmware API calls
+    except request_firmware_direct(). Most distributions disable this option
+    today. The call request_firmware_nowait() allows for one alternative
+    fallback mechanism: if this kconfig option is enabled and your second
+    argument to request_firmware_nowait(), uevent, is set to false you are
+    informing the kernel that you have a custom fallback mechanism and it will
+    manually load the firmware. Read below for more details.
+
+Note that this means when having this configuration:
+
+CONFIG_FW_LOADER_USER_HELPER=y
+CONFIG_FW_LOADER_USER_HELPER_FALLBACK=n
+
+the kobject uevent fallback mechanism will never take effect even
+for request_firmware_nowait() when uevent is set to true.
+
+Justifying the firmware fallback mechanism
+==========================================
+
+Direct filesystem lookups may fail for a variety of reasons. Known reasons for
+this are worth itemizing and documenting as it justifies the need for the
+fallback mechanism:
+
+* Race against access with the root filesystem upon bootup.
+
+* Races upon resume from suspend. This is resolved by the firmware cache, but
+  the firmware cache is only supported if you use uevents, and its not
+  supported for request_firmware_into_buf().
+
+* Firmware is not accessible through typical means:
+
+        * It cannot be installed into the root filesystem
+        * The firmware provides very unique device specific data tailored for
+          the unit gathered with local information. An example is calibration
+          data for WiFi chipsets for mobile devices. This calibration data is
+          not common to all units, but tailored per unit.  Such information may
+          be installed on a separate flash partition other than where the root
+          filesystem is provided.
+
+Types of fallback mechanisms
+============================
+
+There are really two fallback mechanisms available using one shared sysfs
+interface as a loading facility:
+
+* Kobject uevent fallback mechanism
+* Custom fallback mechanism
+
+First lets document the shared sysfs loading facility.
+
+Firmware sysfs loading facility
+===============================
+
+In order to help device drivers upload firmware using a fallback mechanism
+the firmware infrastructure creates a sysfs interface to enable userspace
+to load and indicate when firmware is ready. The sysfs directory is created
+via fw_create_instance(). This call creates a new struct device named after
+the firmware requested, and establishes it in the device hierarchy by
+associating the device used to make the request as the device's parent.
+The sysfs directory's file attributes are defined and controlled through
+the new device's class (firmware_class) and group (fw_dev_attr_groups).
+This is actually where the original firmware_class module name came from,
+given that originally the only firmware loading mechanism available was the
+mechanism we now use as a fallback mechanism, which registers a struct class
+firmware_class. Because the attributes exposed are part of the module name, the
+module name firmware_class cannot be renamed in the future, to ensure backward
+compatibility with old userspace.
+
+To load firmware using the sysfs interface we expose a loading indicator,
+and a file upload firmware into:
+
+  * /sys/$DEVPATH/loading
+  * /sys/$DEVPATH/data
+
+To upload firmware you will echo 1 onto the loading file to indicate
+you are loading firmware. You then write the firmware into the data file,
+and you notify the kernel the firmware is ready by echo'ing 0 onto
+the loading file.
+
+The firmware device used to help load firmware using sysfs is only created if
+direct firmware loading fails and if the fallback mechanism is enabled for your
+firmware request, this is set up with :c:func:`firmware_fallback_sysfs`. It is
+important to re-iterate that no device is created if a direct filesystem lookup
+succeeded.
+
+Using::
+
+        echo 1 > /sys/$DEVPATH/loading
+
+Will clean any previous partial load at once and make the firmware API
+return an error. When loading firmware the firmware_class grows a buffer
+for the firmware in PAGE_SIZE increments to hold the image as it comes in.
+
+firmware_data_read() and firmware_loading_show() are just provided for the
+test_firmware driver for testing, they are not called in normal use or
+expected to be used regularly by userspace.
+
+firmware_fallback_sysfs
+-----------------------
+.. kernel-doc:: drivers/base/firmware_loader/fallback.c
+   :functions: firmware_fallback_sysfs
+
+Firmware kobject uevent fallback mechanism
+==========================================
+
+Since a device is created for the sysfs interface to help load firmware as a
+fallback mechanism userspace can be informed of the addition of the device by
+relying on kobject uevents. The addition of the device into the device
+hierarchy means the fallback mechanism for firmware loading has been initiated.
+For details of implementation refer to fw_load_sysfs_fallback(), in particular
+on the use of dev_set_uevent_suppress() and kobject_uevent().
+
+The kernel's kobject uevent mechanism is implemented in lib/kobject_uevent.c,
+it issues uevents to userspace. As a supplement to kobject uevents Linux
+distributions could also enable CONFIG_UEVENT_HELPER_PATH, which makes use of
+core kernel's usermode helper (UMH) functionality to call out to a userspace
+helper for kobject uevents. In practice though no standard distribution has
+ever used the CONFIG_UEVENT_HELPER_PATH. If CONFIG_UEVENT_HELPER_PATH is
+enabled this binary would be called each time kobject_uevent_env() gets called
+in the kernel for each kobject uevent triggered.
+
+Different implementations have been supported in userspace to take advantage of
+this fallback mechanism. When firmware loading was only possible using the
+sysfs mechanism the userspace component "hotplug" provided the functionality of
+monitoring for kobject events. Historically this was superseded be systemd's
+udev, however firmware loading support was removed from udev as of systemd
+commit be2ea723b1d0 ("udev: remove userspace firmware loading support")
+as of v217 on August, 2014. This means most Linux distributions today are
+not using or taking advantage of the firmware fallback mechanism provided
+by kobject uevents. This is specially exacerbated due to the fact that most
+distributions today disable CONFIG_FW_LOADER_USER_HELPER_FALLBACK.
+
+Refer to do_firmware_uevent() for details of the kobject event variables
+setup. The variables currently passed to userspace with a "kobject add"
+event are:
+
+* FIRMWARE=firmware name
+* TIMEOUT=timeout value
+* ASYNC=whether or not the API request was asynchronous
+
+By default DEVPATH is set by the internal kernel kobject infrastructure.
+Below is an example simple kobject uevent script::
+
+        # Both $DEVPATH and $FIRMWARE are already provided in the environment.
+        MY_FW_DIR=/lib/firmware/
+        echo 1 > /sys/$DEVPATH/loading
+        cat $MY_FW_DIR/$FIRMWARE > /sys/$DEVPATH/data
+        echo 0 > /sys/$DEVPATH/loading
+
+Firmware custom fallback mechanism
+==================================
+
+Users of the request_firmware_nowait() call have yet another option available
+at their disposal: rely on the sysfs fallback mechanism but request that no
+kobject uevents be issued to userspace. The original logic behind this
+was that utilities other than udev might be required to lookup firmware
+in non-traditional paths -- paths outside of the listing documented in the
+section 'Direct filesystem lookup'. This option is not available to any of
+the other API calls as uevents are always forced for them.
+
+Since uevents are only meaningful if the fallback mechanism is enabled
+in your kernel it would seem odd to enable uevents with kernels that do not
+have the fallback mechanism enabled in their kernels. Unfortunately we also
+rely on the uevent flag which can be disabled by request_firmware_nowait() to
+also setup the firmware cache for firmware requests. As documented above,
+the firmware cache is only set up if uevent is enabled for an API call.
+Although this can disable the firmware cache for request_firmware_nowait()
+calls, users of this API should not use it for the purposes of disabling
+the cache as that was not the original purpose of the flag. Not setting
+the uevent flag means you want to opt-in for the firmware fallback mechanism
+but you want to suppress kobject uevents, as you have a custom solution which
+will monitor for your device addition into the device hierarchy somehow and
+load firmware for you through a custom path.
+
+Firmware fallback timeout
+=========================
+
+The firmware fallback mechanism has a timeout. If firmware is not loaded
+onto the sysfs interface by the timeout value an error is sent to the
+driver. By default the timeout is set to 60 seconds if uevents are
+desirable, otherwise MAX_JIFFY_OFFSET is used (max timeout possible).
+The logic behind using MAX_JIFFY_OFFSET for non-uevents is that a custom
+solution will have as much time as it needs to load firmware.
+
+You can customize the firmware timeout by echo'ing your desired timeout into
+the following file:
+
+* /sys/class/firmware/timeout
+
+If you echo 0 into it means MAX_JIFFY_OFFSET will be used. The data type
+for the timeout is an int.
+
+EFI embedded firmware fallback mechanism
+========================================
+
+On some devices the system's EFI code / ROM may contain an embedded copy
+of firmware for some of the system's integrated peripheral devices and
+the peripheral's Linux device-driver needs to access this firmware.
+
+Device drivers which need such firmware can use the
+firmware_request_platform() function for this, note that this is a
+separate fallback mechanism from the other fallback mechanisms and
+this does not use the sysfs interface.
+
+A device driver which needs this can describe the firmware it needs
+using an efi_embedded_fw_desc struct:
+
+.. kernel-doc:: include/linux/efi_embedded_fw.h
+   :functions: efi_embedded_fw_desc
+
+The EFI embedded-fw code works by scanning all EFI_BOOT_SERVICES_CODE memory
+segments for an eight byte sequence matching prefix; if the prefix is found it
+then does a sha256 over length bytes and if that matches makes a copy of length
+bytes and adds that to its list with found firmwares.
+
+To avoid doing this somewhat expensive scan on all systems, dmi matching is
+used. Drivers are expected to export a dmi_system_id array, with each entries'
+driver_data pointing to an efi_embedded_fw_desc.
+
+To register this array with the efi-embedded-fw code, a driver needs to:
+
+1. Always be builtin to the kernel or store the dmi_system_id array in a
+   separate object file which always gets builtin.
+
+2. Add an extern declaration for the dmi_system_id array to
+   include/linux/efi_embedded_fw.h.
+
+3. Add the dmi_system_id array to the embedded_fw_table in
+   drivers/firmware/efi/embedded-firmware.c wrapped in a #ifdef testing that
+   the driver is being builtin.
+
+4. Add "select EFI_EMBEDDED_FIRMWARE if EFI_STUB" to its Kconfig entry.
+
+The firmware_request_platform() function will always first try to load firmware
+with the specified name directly from the disk, so the EFI embedded-fw can
+always be overridden by placing a file under /lib/firmware.
+
+Note that:
+
+1. The code scanning for EFI embedded-firmware runs near the end
+   of start_kernel(), just before calling rest_init(). For normal drivers and
+   subsystems using subsys_initcall() to register themselves this does not
+   matter. This means that code running earlier cannot use EFI
+   embedded-firmware.
+
+2. At the moment the EFI embedded-fw code assumes that firmwares always start at
+   an offset which is a multiple of 8 bytes, if this is not true for your case
+   send in a patch to fix this.
+
+3. At the moment the EFI embedded-fw code only works on x86 because other archs
+   free EFI_BOOT_SERVICES_CODE before the EFI embedded-fw code gets a chance to
+   scan it.
+
+4. The current brute-force scanning of EFI_BOOT_SERVICES_CODE is an ad-hoc
+   brute-force solution. There has been discussion to use the UEFI Platform
+   Initialization (PI) spec's Firmware Volume protocol. This has been rejected
+   because the FV Protocol relies on *internal* interfaces of the PI spec, and:
+   1. The PI spec does not define peripheral firmware at all
+   2. The internal interfaces of the PI spec do not guarantee any backward
+   compatibility. Any implementation details in FV may be subject to change,
+   and may vary system to system. Supporting the FV Protocol would be
+   difficult as it is purposely ambiguous.
+
+Example how to check for and extract embedded firmware
+------------------------------------------------------
+
+To check for, for example Silead touchscreen controller embedded firmware,
+do the following:
+
+1. Boot the system with efi=debug on the kernel commandline
+
+2. cp /sys/kernel/debug/efi/boot_services_code? to your home dir
+
+3. Open the boot_services_code? files in a hex-editor, search for the
+   magic prefix for Silead firmware: F0 00 00 00 02 00 00 00, this gives you
+   the beginning address of the firmware inside the boot_services_code? file.
+
+4. The firmware has a specific pattern, it starts with a 8 byte page-address,
+   typically F0 00 00 00 02 00 00 00 for the first page followed by 32-bit
+   word-address + 32-bit value pairs. With the word-address incrementing 4
+   bytes (1 word) for each pair until a page is complete. A complete page is
+   followed by a new page-address, followed by more word + value pairs. This
+   leads to a very distinct pattern. Scroll down until this pattern stops,
+   this gives you the end of the firmware inside the boot_services_code? file.
+
+5. "dd if=boot_services_code? of=firmware bs=1 skip=<begin-addr> count=<len>"
+   will extract the firmware for you. Inspect the firmware file in a
+   hexeditor to make sure you got the dd parameters correct.
+
+6. Copy it to /lib/firmware under the expected name to test it.
+
+7. If the extracted firmware works, you can use the found info to fill an
+   efi_embedded_fw_desc struct to describe it, run "sha256sum firmware"
+   to get the sha256sum to put in the sha256 field.