Re: [PATCH 1/2] i2c: designware: Only check the first byte for SMBus block read length

[Sultan Alsawaf]

On Mon, Jun 15, 2020 at 07:07:42PM +0300, Andy Shevchenko wrote:
> On Mon, Jun 15, 2020 at 7:06 PM Sultan Alsawaf <sultan@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> > On Mon, Jun 15, 2020 at 12:40:19PM +0300, Andy Shevchenko wrote:
> > > On Sun, Jun 14, 2020 at 02:02:54PM -0700, Sultan Alsawaf wrote:
> > > > From: Sultan Alsawaf <sultan@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
> > > >
> > > > SMBus block reads can be broken because the read function will just skip
> > > > over bytes it doesn't like until reaching a byte that conforms to the
> > > > length restrictions for block reads. This is problematic when it isn't
> > > > known if the incoming payload is indeed a conforming block read.
> > > >
> > > > According to the SMBus specification, block reads will only send the
> > > > payload length in the first byte, so we can fix this by only considering
> > > > the first byte in a sequence for block read length purposes.
> > >
> > > I'm wondering if this overlaps with [1]. AFAIU that one is also makes sure that
> > > the length is not a garbage.
> > >
> > > [1]: https://lore.kernel.org/linux-i2c/20200613104109.2989-1-mans@xxxxxxxxx/T/#u
> >
> > No overlap.
> 
> Thanks for clarifying.
> 
> > That looks like a similar bug for a different driver. In my case,
> > the adapter provides native SMBus support, so emulation is never used. This is
> > clear to see by looking at i2c_transfer_buffer_flags(), which only uses the
> > master_xfer functions provided by the adapter; it doesn't call the emulation
> > path at all.
> 
> But do we get an advantage if this can be done in the i2c core instead
> (once for all)?

We can't, because the adapter driver needs to know mid-transfer to look for the
payload length in the first byte, and then alter the transfer size on-the-fly.
That can't be done in the i2c core, sadly. The problem is that we don't know if
a transfer is going to be a block read or not beforehand. And altering the
transfer size mid-transfer is definitely a controller specific task.

Sultan