On Tue, 2019-03-12 at 14:50 +0200, Jarkko Sakkinen wrote: > On Mon, Mar 11, 2019 at 05:27:43PM -0700, James Bottomley wrote: > > On Mon, 2019-03-11 at 16:54 -0700, Calvin Owens wrote: > > > e're having lots of problems with TPM commands timing out, and > > > we're seeing these problems across lots of different hardware > > > (both v1/v2). > > > > > > I instrumented the driver to collect latency data, but I wasn't > > > able to find any specific timeout to fix: it seems like many of > > > them are too aggressive. So I tried replacing all the timeout > > > logic with a single universal long timeout, and found that makes > > > our TPMs 100% reliable. > > > > > > Given that this timeout logic is very complex, problematic, and > > > appears to serve no real purpose, I propose simply deleting all > > > of it. > > > > "no real purpose" is a bit strong given that all these timeouts are > > standards mandated. The purpose stated by the standards is that > > there needs to be a way of differentiating the TPM crashed from the > > TPM is taking a very long time to respond. For a normally > > functioning TPM it looks complex and unnecessary, but for a > > malfunctioning one it's a lifesaver. > > Standards should be only followed when they make practical sense and > ignored when not. The range is only up to 2s anyway.
I don't disagree ... and I'm certainly not going to defend the TCG because I do think the complexity of some of its standards contributed to the lack of use of TPM 1.2. However, I am saying we should root cause this problem rather than take a blind shot at the apparent timeout complexity. My timeout instability is definitely related to the polling adjustments, so it's not unreasonable to think Facebooks might be as well. James
