On Wed 2017-06-14 18:11:28, Sergey Senozhatsky wrote: > On (06/13/17 14:54), Petr Mladek wrote: > > > This patch modifies the code that enables the configured consoles. > > It sets the CON_CONSDEV flag also when we register the first > > console. It causes that one of the registered consoles will > > always have CON_CONSDEV flag set. > > hm.... my impression was that we shouldn't set CON_CONSDEV if the > console has no ->device. but then, once again, unregister_console() > does not care and register_console() cares only in one place. so I'm > a bit in doubt.
Great catch! It helped me to get even better picture. If I get it correctly, the console driver for /dev/console is found in tty_lookup_driver() by console_device(). Where console_device() skips console drivers without any device. CON_CONSDEV is basically handled only in register_console() and unregister_console(). The driver with this flag is kept at the beginning of the console_drivers list. It causes that console_device() will return the console with this flag. Also it is in sync with the commit cd3a1b8562d28490b33 ("printk: don't prefer unsuited consoles on registration"). It added the check for existing device into the fallback code in console_register() so that console_device() might find a valid one. BTW: The flag CON_CONSDEV first appeared in Linux 2.1.92. It replaced CON_FIRST. Documentation/serial-console.txt was modified so that the last console on the command line will be used for /dev/console instead of the first one. In each case, it seems that CON_CONSDEV is closely related to an existing device and does not make much sense without it. Heh, the handling in unregister_console() looks buggy. Well, it probably does not break anything. The function does not change the order of drivers and console_device() searches the entire list until it finds a console with device. Anyway, it would make sense to clean it as well. Thanks a lot for review. Best Regards, Petr