[PATCH v1 1/4] net/e1000: prevent crashes in secondary processes

[Burakov, Anatoly]

On 12/12/2024 7:02 PM, Stephen Hemminger wrote:
> On Thu, 12 Dec 2024 16:19:03 +0000
> Anatoly Burakov <anatoly.burakov at intel.com> wrote:
> 
>> Currently, the architecture of the base driver is such that it uses
>> function pointers internally. These are not guaranteed to be valid in
>> secondary processes, which can lead to crashes. This patch prevents these
>> functions from being executed in e1000 driver.
>>
>> Fixes: 805803445a02 ("e1000: support EM devices (also known as e1000/e1000e)")
>> Cc: stable at dpdk.org
>>
>> Signed-off-by: Anatoly Burakov <anatoly.burakov at intel.com>
>> ---
> 
> Not a fan of this. It creates so many special cases like: "This is ixgbe, and
> it can do X but not Y in secondary process".
> 
> Either the driver should get fixed correctly so that all operations work
> in secondary process, yes you would have to fix the base code.
> 
> Or the driver should be not support secondary process model at all.
> 
> If you have to write lots of documentation about limitations, it is not helping
> the user.

That is the intention. Fixing these issues will take some effort as 
there's a lot of code to fix due to how endemic function pointers' usage 
are to these drivers, but in the meantime, things "arbitrarily not 
working" is better than things crashing outright.

-- 
Thanks,
Anatoly