Re: [PATCH v7 19/19] staging: r8188eu: remove shared buffer for usb requests

From: Pavel Skripkin <paskripkin@gmail.com>
To: Greg Kroah-Hartman <gregkh@linuxfoundation.org>
Cc: Larry Finger <Larry.Finger@lwfinger.net>,
	Phillip Potter <phil@philpotter.co.uk>,
	linux-staging@lists.linux.dev, linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org,
	David Laight <david.Laight@aculab.com>,
	Dan Carpenter <dan.carpenter@oracle.com>,
	"Fabio M. De Francesco" <fmdefrancesco@gmail.com>
Subject: Re: [PATCH v7 19/19] staging: r8188eu: remove shared buffer for usb requests
Date: Fri, 17 Sep 2021 18:23:23 +0300	[thread overview]
Message-ID: <4e39e4ef-995d-49ce-58d6-75fd6a27da96@gmail.com> (raw)
In-Reply-To: <YUSxtQ7D0w6QkB/N@kroah.com>

On 9/17/21 18:18, Greg Kroah-Hartman wrote:
> On Fri, Sep 17, 2021 at 06:03:52PM +0300, Pavel Skripkin wrote:
>> On 9/17/21 17:55, Greg Kroah-Hartman wrote:
>> > On Fri, Sep 17, 2021 at 09:18:37AM +0200, Fabio M. De Francesco wrote:
>> > > From: Pavel Skripkin <paskripkin@gmail.com>
>> > > 
>> > > This driver used shared buffer for usb requests. It led to using
>> > > mutexes, i.e no usb requests can be done in parallel.
>> > > 
>> > > USB requests can be fired in parallel since USB Core allows it. In
>> > > order to allow them, remove usb_vendor_req_buf from dvobj_priv (since
>> > > USB I/O is the only user of it) and remove also usb_vendor_req_mutex
>> > > (since there is nothing to protect).
>> > 
>> > Ah, you are removing this buffer, nice!
>> > 
>> > But, just because the USB core allows multiple messages to be sent to a
>> > device at the same time, does NOT mean that the device itself can handle
>> > that sort of a thing.
>> > 
>> > Keeping that lock might be a good idea, until you can prove otherwise.
>> > You never know, maybe there's never any contention at all for it because
>> > these accesses are all done in a serial fashion and the lock
>> > grab/release is instant.  But if that is not the case, you might really
>> > get a device confused here by throwing multiple control messages at it
>> > in ways that it is not set up to handle at all.
>> > 
>> > So please do not drop the lock.
>> > 
>> > More comments below.
>> > 
>> 
>> We have tested this change. I've tested it in qemu with TP-Link TL-WN722N v2
>> / v3 [Realtek RTL8188EUS], and Fabio has tested it on his host for like a
>> whole evening.
>> 
>> I agree, that our testing does not cover all possible cases and I can't say
>> it was "good stress testing", so, I think, we need some comments from
>> maintainers.
> 
> Ok, then make it a single patch that does nothing but remove the lock so
> that we can revert it later when problems show up :)
> 

Sure! Thank you again :)

With regards,
Pavel Skripkin