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authorNiklas Cassel <cassel@kernel.org>2026-09-18 16:06:42 +0200
committerJens Axboe <axboe@kernel.dk>2026-09-29 12:54:47 -0600
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treef167daddad3dce9af44773541373eafbccc9ac61 /Documentation/driver-api/driver-model/design-patterns.rst
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virtio_blk: set the zone write granularitygrafted
virtblk_read_zoned_limits() reads the write granularity that the device reports in virtio_blk_zoned_characteristics and assigns it to the physical block size and to io_min, but never to the limit that is named after it. queue_limits.zone_write_granularity is left at zero, so blk_validate_zoned_limits() raises it to the logical block size: if (lim->zone_write_granularity < lim->logical_block_size) lim->zone_write_granularity = lim->logical_block_size; A device that reports a granularity coarser than its logical block size, which is what the field exists to express, therefore has it silently reduced. A 512e host managed disk passed through to a guest reports a logical block size of 512 and a write granularity of 4096, and the guest ends up with a zone write granularity of 512. bio_split_alignment() returns lim->zone_write_granularity if it is non-zero and bio_split_io_at() may split a bio with as per bio_split_alignment(). This can real to the write getting rejected by the host drive, as the write is not aligned to the physical block size. zonefs also takes its block size from bdev_zone_write_granularity(), so it would incorrectly use 512 on a disk that requires 4096. sd_zbc_read_zones() sets the limit from the physical block size for the same reason. NVMe ZNS and null_blk leave it unset, but the fallback gives the right answer for them, as their write granularity is the logical block size. virtio carries a separate value that may exceed it. Set the zone write granularity from the value that the device reports. Fixes: 95bfec41bd3d ("virtio-blk: add support for zoned block devices") Signed-off-by: Niklas Cassel <cassel@kernel.org> Reviewed-by: Stefan Hajnoczi <stefanha@redhat.com> Link: https://patch.msgid.link/20260918140641.2031075-2-cassel@kernel.org Signed-off-by: Jens Axboe <axboe@kernel.dk>
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+=============================
+Device Driver Design Patterns
+=============================
+
+This document describes a few common design patterns found in device drivers.
+It is likely that subsystem maintainers will ask driver developers to
+conform to these design patterns.
+
+1. State Container
+2. container_of()
+
+
+1. State Container
+~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
+
+While the kernel contains a few device drivers that assume that they will
+only be probed() once on a certain system (singletons), it is custom to assume
+that the device the driver binds to will appear in several instances. This
+means that the probe() function and all callbacks need to be reentrant.
+
+The most common way to achieve this is to use the state container design
+pattern. It usually has this form::
+
+ struct foo {
+ spinlock_t lock; /* Example member */
+ (...)
+ };
+
+ static int foo_probe(...)
+ {
+ struct foo *foo;
+
+ foo = devm_kzalloc(dev, sizeof(*foo), GFP_KERNEL);
+ if (!foo)
+ return -ENOMEM;
+ spin_lock_init(&foo->lock);
+ (...)
+ }
+
+This will create an instance of struct foo in memory every time probe() is
+called. This is our state container for this instance of the device driver.
+Of course it is then necessary to always pass this instance of the
+state around to all functions that need access to the state and its members.
+
+For example, if the driver is registering an interrupt handler, you would
+pass around a pointer to struct foo like this::
+
+ static irqreturn_t foo_handler(int irq, void *arg)
+ {
+ struct foo *foo = arg;
+ (...)
+ }
+
+ static int foo_probe(...)
+ {
+ struct foo *foo;
+
+ (...)
+ ret = request_irq(irq, foo_handler, 0, "foo", foo);
+ }
+
+This way you always get a pointer back to the correct instance of foo in
+your interrupt handler.
+
+
+2. container_of()
+~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
+
+Continuing on the above example we add an offloaded work::
+
+ struct foo {
+ spinlock_t lock;
+ struct workqueue_struct *wq;
+ struct work_struct offload;
+ (...)
+ };
+
+ static void foo_work(struct work_struct *work)
+ {
+ struct foo *foo = container_of(work, struct foo, offload);
+
+ (...)
+ }
+
+ static irqreturn_t foo_handler(int irq, void *arg)
+ {
+ struct foo *foo = arg;
+
+ queue_work(foo->wq, &foo->offload);
+ (...)
+ }
+
+ static int foo_probe(...)
+ {
+ struct foo *foo;
+
+ foo->wq = create_singlethread_workqueue("foo-wq");
+ INIT_WORK(&foo->offload, foo_work);
+ (...)
+ }
+
+The design pattern is the same for an hrtimer or something similar that will
+return a single argument which is a pointer to a struct member in the
+callback.
+
+container_of() is a macro defined in <linux/container_of.h>
+
+What container_of() does is to obtain a pointer to the containing struct from
+a pointer to a member by a simple subtraction using the offsetof() macro from
+standard C, which allows something similar to object oriented behaviours.
+Notice that the contained member must not be a pointer, but an actual member
+for this to work.
+
+We can see here that we avoid having global pointers to our struct foo *
+instance this way, while still keeping the number of parameters passed to the
+work function to a single pointer.