RE: [PATCH v3 3/4] fbdev/deferred-io: Support contiguous kernel memory framebuffers

[Michael Kelley <mhklinux@outlook.com>]

From: Thomas Zimmermann <tzimmermann@suse.de> Sent: Monday, June 2, 2025 11:25 PM
> 
> Hi
> 
> Am 03.06.25 um 03:49 schrieb Michael Kelley:
> [...]
> >> Will the VMA have VM_PFNMAP or VM_MIXEDMAP set? PFN_SPECIAL is a
> >> horrible hack.
> >>
> >> In another thread, you mention that you use PFN_SPECIAL to bypass the
> >> check in vm_mixed_ok(), so VM_MIXEDMAP is likely not set?
> > The VMA has VM_PFNMAP set, not VM_MIXEDMAP.  It seemed like
> > VM_MIXEDMAP is somewhat of a superset of VM_PFNMAP, but maybe that's
> > a wrong impression. vm_mixed_ok() does a thorough job of validating the
> > use of __vm_insert_mixed(), and since what I did was allowed, I thought
> > perhaps it was OK. Your feedback has set me straight, and that's what I
> > needed. :-)
> >
> > But the whole approach is moot with Alistair Popple's patch set that
> > eliminates pfn_t. Is there an existing mm API that will do mkwrite on a
> > special PTE in a VM_PFNMAP VMA? I didn't see one, but maybe I missed
> > it. If there's not one, I'll take a crack at adding it in the next version of my
> > patch set.
> 
> What is the motivation behind this work? The driver or fbdev as a whole
> does not have much of a future anyway.
> 
> I'd like to suggest removing hyperv_fb entirely in favor of hypervdrm?
> 

Yes, I think that's the longer term direction. A couple months ago I had an
email conversation with Saurabh Sengar from the Microsoft Linux team where
he raised this idea. I think the Microsoft folks will need to drive the deprecation
process, as they need to coordinate with the distro vendors who publish
images for running on local Hyper-V and in the Azure cloud. And my
understanding is that the Linux kernel process would want the driver to
be available but marked "deprecated" for a year or so before it actually
goes away.

I do have some concerns about the maturity of the hyperv_drm driver
"around the edges". For example, somebody just recently submitted a
patch to flush output on panic. I have less familiarity hyperv_drm vs.
hyperv_fb, so some of my concern is probably due to that. We might
need to do review of hyperv_drm and see if there's anything else to
deal with before hyperv_fb goes away.

This all got started when I was looking at a problem with hyperv_fb,
and I found several other related problems, some of which also existed
in hyperv_drm. You've seen several small'ish fixes from me and Saurabh
as a result, and this issue with mmap()'ing /dev/fb0 is the last one of that
set. This fix is definitely a bit bigger, but it's the right fix. On the flip side, 
if we really get on a path to deprecate hyperv_fb, there are hack fixes for
the mmap problem that are smaller and contained to hyperv_fb. I would
be OK with a hack fix in that case.

Michael