Re: [patch 0/2] serial: explicitly request ttyS0-3 for COM1-4

[Bjorn Helgaas <bjorn.helgaas@hp.com>]

On Thursday 17 January 2008 09:16:51 am Russell King wrote:
> On Thu, Jan 17, 2008 at 09:07:29AM -0700, Bjorn Helgaas wrote:
> > On Wednesday 16 January 2008 01:14:38 pm Russell King wrote:
> > > On Wed, Jan 16, 2008 at 12:59:27PM -0700, Bjorn Helgaas wrote:
> > > > On Wednesday 16 January 2008 11:39:34 am Russell King wrote:
> > > > > On Wed, Jan 16, 2008 at 10:05:41AM -0700, Bjorn Helgaas wrote:
> > > > > > When 8250_pnp discovers COM ports, we only get the correct ttyS names
> > > > > > by accident -- we rely on serial8250_isa_init_ports(), which discovers
> > > > > > the COM ports earlier using the addresses in SERIAL_PORT_DFNS.
> > > > > 
> > > > > It's not by accident but by design.  It's quite intentional that it
> > > > > remembers the addresses of serial ports, and if another port is
> > > > > registered later with the same base address, it gets the same name.
> > > > 
> > > > It's certainly by design that if we register a port twice, it gets
> > > > the same name both times.
> > > 
> > > Incorrect - if it's not detected first time around (eg, the port isn't
> > > accessible at that time), its slot will still be reserved due to the
> > > way slots are given out.
> > > 
> > > Slots are given to users in order of:
> > > 
> > > 1. does the IO type and base address of a previously known port match
> > >    the new port?  If so, use that.
> > > 2. do we have a slot which has never been used - use that.
> > > 3. find the first slot which is not currently in use.
> > > 
> > > So, the only way we'd get the first set of ttyS slots used is if all of
> > > the following are true:
> > > 
> > > a) the ISA probe doesn't detect them
> > > b) some other driver registers many ports which don't correspond with any
> > >    of the ISA listed addresses and we run out of empty slots
> > > c) 8250_pnp initialises after this driver
> > > 
> > > (c) is unlikely, except in the modular case - we explicitly list 8250_pnp
> > > immediately after the 8250 driver so that it gets first call on the
> > > slots during initialisation time, before we probe for PCI devices.
> > 
> > Let me back up a minute.  I was merely trying to make the point that
> > if we skip the ISA probe (which uses SERIAL_PORT_DFNS), the 8250_pnp
> > probe will discover the COM ports but won't necessarily name them the
> > way we expect (e.g., http://lkml.org/lkml/2007/8/10/409).
> 
> It would be useful to see the full kernel messages to diagnose what's
> going on.  Given that there's no changes to the serial probing code
> (or even the code which allocates slots) there's something fishy going
> on.  Are they using mainline kernels or do the kernels they're using
> have some other changes which aren't in mainline?

I'm not trying to fix a current problem.  The URL I quoted was from
2.6.22, where we didn't do the ISA probe.  We fixed that problem by
putting the ISA probe back the way it was in 2.6.21.

But I do still want to remove the dependency between the ISA probe
and the 8250_pnp probe because it seems like it's more complicated
than it needs to be, and if we could figure out a way to safely remove
the ISA probe, it would help solve the IRDA issues.

Bjorn