Re: [PATCH v4 0/5] gpio: Add GPIO Aggregator

[Eugeniu Rosca]

Hi Geert,

On Wed, Jan 15, 2020 at 07:15:18PM +0100, Geert Uytterhoeven wrote:
>       Hi all,
> 
> GPIO controllers are exported to userspace using /dev/gpiochip*
> character devices.  Access control to these devices is provided by
> standard UNIX file system permissions, on an all-or-nothing basis:
> either a GPIO controller is accessible for a user, or it is not.
> Currently no mechanism exists to control access to individual GPIOs.
> 
> Hence this adds a GPIO driver to aggregate existing GPIOs, and expose
> them as a new gpiochip.  This is useful for implementing access control,
> and assigning a set of GPIOs to a specific user.  Furthermore, this
> simplifies and hardens exporting GPIOs to a virtual machine, as the VM
> can just grab the full GPIO controller, and no longer needs to care
> about which GPIOs to grab and which not, reducing the attack surface.
> 
> Recently, other use cases have been discovered[1]:
>   - Describing simple GPIO-operated devices in DT, and using the GPIO
>     Aggregator as a generic GPIO driver for userspace, which is useful
>     for industrial control.

As per comments and test results in [*] (accidentally attached to v3):

Reviewed-by: Eugeniu Rosca <address@hidden>
Tested-by: Eugeniu Rosca <address@hidden>

[*] https://lore.kernel.org/linux-renesas-soc/address@hidden/
    ("Re: [PATCH v3 0/7] gpio: Add GPIO Aggregator/Repeater")

-- 
Best Regards,
Eugeniu Rosca