Re: [PATCH] init: Add support for rootwait timeout parameter

[Loic Poulain <loic.poulain@linaro.org>]

Hi Christian,

On Tue, 30 May 2023 at 11:45, Christian Brauner <brauner@kernel.org> wrote:
>
> On Fri, May 26, 2023 at 03:07:16PM +0200, Loic Poulain wrote:
> > Add an optional timeout arg to 'rootwait' as the maximum time in
> > seconds to wait for the root device to show up before attempting
> > forced mount of the root filesystem.
> >
> > This can be helpful to force boot failure and restart in case the
> > root device does not show up in time, allowing the bootloader to
> > take any appropriate measures (e.g. recovery, A/B switch, retry...).
> >
> > In success case, mounting happens as soon as the root device is ready,
> > contrary to the existing 'rootdelay' parameter (unconditional delay).
> >
> > Signed-off-by: Loic Poulain <loic.poulain@linaro.org>
> > ---
>
> Not terribly opposed and not terribly convinced yet.
> So, we have rootdelay= with a timeout parameter that allows to specify a
> delay before attempting to mount the root device. And we have rootwait
> currently as an indefinite wait. Adding a timeout for rootwait doesn't
> seem crazy and is backwards compatible. But there's no mention of any
> concrete users or use-case for this which is usually preferable. If this
> is just "could be useful for someone eventually" it's way less desirable
> to merge this than when it's "here's a/multiple user/users"... So I
> would love to see a use-case described here.

I can integrate the following use case into a v2 if you think it makes sense:

In case of device mapper usage for the root filesystem (e.g.
root=/dev/dm-0), if the mapper is not able to create the virtual block
for any reasons (wrong arguments, bad dm-verity signature, etc), the
`rootwait` parameter will cause the kernel to wait forever. Adding a
timeout allows it to detect the 'error' (panic) and reset the device
after a few seconds, the bootloader can then decide to mark this
non-bootable partition/parameter and fallback to another partition
(A/B case) or into a recovery mode.

But it's not specific to device mapper, if a eMMC/SDCARD is not
detected at boot time because of hardware or software problems (e.g.
updated with a bad devicetree), it could be desirable to panic/reboot
instead of waiting for something that will never happen.

>
> And this is only useful if there isn't an early userspace init that
> parses and manages root=. So we need to hit prepare_namespaces() as a
> rootwait timeout isn't meaningful if this is done by and early init in
> the initramfs for example.

Indeed, and I do not use initramfs in the above use case, the mapped
device is created directly from the kernel (thanks to dm-mod.create=),
mostly for boot time optimization reason, and this is for the same
reason that rootdelay does not fit.

Regards,
Loic