Re: [PATCH v4] PCI: Relabel JHL6540 on Lenovo X1 Carbon 7,8

[Mika Westerberg]

On Fri, Jan 19, 2024 at 07:37:56AM +0200, Mika Westerberg wrote:
> On Thu, Jan 18, 2024 at 08:12:56AM -0800, Dmitry Torokhov wrote:
> > On Thu, Jan 18, 2024 at 09:47:07AM -0600, Mario Limonciello wrote:
> > > On 1/18/2024 00:00, Mika Westerberg wrote:
> > > > > Before my patch, you see that the JHL6540 controller is inaccurately
> > > > > labeled “removable”:
> > > > > $ udevadm info -a -p /sys/bus/pci/devices/0000:05:00.0 | grep -e
> > > > > {removable} -e {device} -e {vendor} -e looking
> > > > >    looking at device '/devices/pci0000:00/0000:00:1d.4/0000:05:00.0':
> > > > >      ATTR{device}=="0x15d3"
> > > > >      ATTR{removable}=="removable"
> > > > >      ATTR{vendor}=="0x8086"
> > > > 
> > > > This is actually accurate. The Thunderbolt controller is itself
> > > > hot-removable and that BTW happens to be hot-removed when fwupd applies
> > > > firmware upgrades to the device.
> > 
> > This is quite interesting take. Does fwupd rip the controller out of the
> > box to update it? By that account your touchpad is also removable as it
> > may stop functioning when its firmware gets updated.
> 
> The Thunderbolt controller is connected to a hotpluggable PCIe root port
> so it will be dissappear from the userspace so that "removable" in that
> sense is accurate.

There are systems as well where the Thunderbolt (and/or xHCI) controller
only appears if there is anything plugged to the physical Type-C ports
and it gets removed pretty soon after the physical device gets
unplugged. These are also the same Alpine Ridge and Titan Ridge
controllers that this patch is dealing with.

I tried to think about some sort of more generic heuristic how to figure
out that the controller is actually inside the physical system but there
is a problem that the same controller can appear on the bus as well, eg.
you plug in Thunderbolt dock and that one has xHCI controller too. That
device should definitely be "removable". With the "software CM" systems
we have a couple of additional hints in the ACPI tables that can be used
to identify the "tunneled" ports but this does not apply to the older
systems I'm afraid.

Now if I understand the reason behind this patch is actually not about
"removability" that much than about identifying a trusted vs. untrusted
device and attaching a driver to those. I was under impression that
there is already a solution to this in ChromeOS kernel. It has an
allowlist of drivers that are allowed to attach these devices and that
includes the PCIe port drivers, xhci_hcd and the thunderbolt driver,
possibly something else too. Is this not working for your case?