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| author | Linus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org> | 2026-09-25 15:55:03 -0700 |
|---|---|---|
| committer | Linus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org> | 2026-09-25 15:55:03 -0700 |
| commit | 75467f60a3d14f08f86f2b353298d2826382ff23 (patch) | |
| tree | acd8a7d5b5a675042449386efa5b42ec44d8bf81 /Documentation/driver-api/driver-model/design-patterns.rst | |
| download | linux-stable-75467f60a3d14f08f86f2b353298d2826382ff23.tar.gz linux-stable-75467f60a3d14f08f86f2b353298d2826382ff23.zip | |
Merge tag 'ipe-pr-20260925' of git://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/wufan/ipegrafted
Pull IPE fixes from Fan Wu:
"Two fixes for use-after-free issues found by recent LLM-assisted code
analysis.
- move successful policy load auditing under the new policy
directory's inode lock, preventing a concurrent policy deletion
from freeing the policy while it is still being audited
- protect the dm-verity root hash with RCU, preventing policy
evaluation from racing with root hash replacement during preresume"
* tag 'ipe-pr-20260925' of git://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/wufan/ipe:
ipe: protect the dm-verity root hash with RCU
ipe: fix use-after-free when auditing a newly loaded policy
Diffstat (limited to 'Documentation/driver-api/driver-model/design-patterns.rst')
| -rw-r--r-- | Documentation/driver-api/driver-model/design-patterns.rst | 116 |
1 files changed, 116 insertions, 0 deletions
diff --git a/Documentation/driver-api/driver-model/design-patterns.rst b/Documentation/driver-api/driver-model/design-patterns.rst new file mode 100644 index 000000000..965b2b93b --- /dev/null +++ b/Documentation/driver-api/driver-model/design-patterns.rst @@ -0,0 +1,116 @@ +============================= +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. |
