Proposal to send GSM sysfs patches on stable

[Mike (mwester)]

Andy Green wrote:
> I have an idea though, what do you guys do about the U-Boot mkudfu
> content?  Is there anything in there we can use to make a decision about
> in Qi's GTA02 code as to how to leave the UARTs?  Eg, kernel revision?

Just another data point that would confirm Qi's behavior as correct:
kernels that do not set the UART data lines correctly are broken from
the point-of-view of kexec.

Kexec does not use the bootloader; the rules for kexec require that the
kernel drivers set everything they need as they initialize because they
cannot assume anything about the state the hardware had when the kexec
happened.

So I guess I am worried that patching Qi to fix this may just defer this
problem to that time when we see a kexec-based boot-menu appear --
perhaps we really do need to put a firm boundary on this issue, and
leave Qi alone.  (And yes, that will cause some problems for other
distros, but at this point I suspect that the distros that cannot
back-port this patch into their distro kernels are probably dead, and
their users are unlikely to switch to Qi in the first place -- and as
Paul points out, it can also be fixed from user-space... I'm just not
sure that changing Qi is going to make this better; it's a kernel bug,
clearly.)

-Mike (mwester)