Re: [PATCH v3 2/2] misc: pvpanic: introduce module parameter 'events'
From: Paolo Bonzini
Date: Fri Jan 08 2021 - 10:27:51 EST
On 08/01/21 16:15, Greg KH wrote:
On Fri, Jan 08, 2021 at 04:04:24PM +0100, Paolo Bonzini wrote:
On 08/01/21 15:07, Greg KH wrote:
static void __iomem *base;
+static unsigned int events = PVPANIC_PANICKED | PVPANIC_CRASH_LOADED;
+module_param(events, uint, 0644);
+MODULE_PARM_DESC(events, "set event limitation of pvpanic device");
I do not understand you wanting a module parameter as well as a sysfs
file. Why is this needed? Why are you spreading this information out
across different apis and locations?
It can be useful to disable some functionality, for example in case you want
to fake running on an older virtualization host. This can be done for
debugging reasons, or to keep uniform handling across a fleet that is
running different versions of QEMU.
And where is this all going to be documented?
I don't disagree.
And what's wrong with just making the sysfs attribute writable?
Isn't it harder to configure it at boot? Also the sysfs attribute added
by patch 1 is documenting what is supported by the device, while the
module parameter can be set to any value (you can think of the module
parameter as of a "what to log" option, except the logging happens on
another machine).
Therefore, if you make the sysfs attribute writable, you would actually
need _two_ attributes, one for the in-use capabilities and one for the
device capabilities. And sysfs files are runtime values, which is
different concept than 0444 module parameters (which are more like just
configuration). So you would have to decide whether it's valid to write
2 to the in-use capabilities file when the device capabilities are "1",
and I don't really have a good answer for that.
Also considering that there will not be more than one copy of this
device (it doesn't make sense as they would all do exactly the same
thing), in this case a module parameter really seems to be the simplest
way to configure it.
Paolo