Re: [PATCH 4/4] rtc: s3c: Fix RTC read on first boot

[Krzysztof Kozlowski]

On 19/10/2021 17:48, Alexandre Belloni wrote:
> On 19/10/2021 16:17:24+0300, Sam Protsenko wrote:
>> On first RTC boot it has the month register value set to 0.
>> Unconditional subtracting of 1 subsequently in s3c_rtc_gettime() leads
>> to the next error message in kernel log:
>>
>>     hctosys: unable to read the hardware clock
>>
>> That happens in s3c_rtc_probe() when trying to register the RTC, which
>> in turn tries to read and validate the time. Initialize RTC date/time
>> registers to valid values in probe function on the first boot to prevent
>> such errors.
>>
> 
> No, never ever do that, the time is bogus and it has to stay this way,
> else userspace can't know whether the time on the RTC is the actual wall
> time or just some random value that you have set from the driver.
> 

Indeed. This looks basically like a revert of your commit 5c78cceeb2d8
("rtc: s3c: stop setting bogus time"). For the Samsung PMIC RTC, we
dropped time initialization in commit fe787a5b2297 ("rtc: s5m: remove
undocumented time init on first boot").

Best regards,
Krzysztof