Re: [PATCH] sysctl: Add a group of macro functions to initcall the sysctl table of each feature

From: Xiaoming Ni
Date: Tue Dec 07 2021 - 01:25:22 EST


On 2021/12/7 9:50, Joe Perches wrote:
On Mon, 2021-12-06 at 17:38 -0800, Andrew Morton wrote:
On Tue, 7 Dec 2021 09:13:20 +0800 Xiaoming Ni <nixiaoming@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

To avoid duplicated code, add a set of macro functions to initialize the
sysctl table for each feature.

The system initialization process is as follows:

start_kernel () {
...
/* init proc and sysctl base,
* proc_root_init()-->proc_sys_init()-->sysctl_init_bases()
*/
proc_root_init(); /* init proc and sysctl base */
...
arch_call_rest_init();
}

arch_call_rest_init()-->rest_init()-->kernel_init()
kernel_init() {
...
kernel_init_freeable(); /* do all initcalls */
...
do_sysctl_args(); /* Process the sysctl parameter: sysctl.*= */
}

kernel_init_freeable()--->do_basic_setup()-->do_initcalls()
do_initcalls() {
for (level = 0; level < ARRAY_SIZE(initcall_levels) - 1; level++) {
do_initcall_level
}

The sysctl interface of each subfeature should be registered after
sysctl_init_bases() and before do_sysctl_args(). It seems that the sysctl
interface does not depend on initcall_levels. To prevent the sysctl
interface from being initialized before the feature itself. The
lowest-level late_initcall() is used as the common sysctl interface
registration level.

I'm not normally a fan of wrapping commonly-used code sequences into
magical macros, but this one does seem to make sense.

I wonder if it is possible to cook up a checkpatch rule to tell people
to henceforth use the magic macros rather than to open-code things in
the old way. Sounds hard.

Almost impossible for checkpatch.
Likely easier in coccinelle.


Maybe we can add a rudimentary check to the checkpatch.

diff --git a/scripts/checkpatch.pl b/scripts/checkpatch.pl
index b01c36a15d9d..26e953ae4cc5 100755
--- a/scripts/checkpatch.pl
+++ b/scripts/checkpatch.pl
@@ -7212,6 +7212,12 @@ sub process {
"Deprecated use of '$deprecated_api', prefer '$new_api' instead\n" . $herecurr);
}

+# check register_sysctl_init
+ if ($prevline =~ /{/ && $rawline =~ /\sregister_sysctl_init\(\"(kernel|fs|vm|debug|dev)\",\s+(.*)\)\;/) {
+ WARN("DEPRECATED_API",
+ "Deprecated use of 'register_sysctl_init(\"$1\", $2);', prefer '$1_sysctl_initcall($2);' instead\n".$herecurr);
+ }
+
# check for various structs that are normally const (ops, kgdb, device_tree)
# and avoid what seem like struct definitions 'struct foo {'
if (defined($const_structs) &&



Thanks
Xiaoming Ni