Merge tag 'driver-core-4.11-rc1' of git://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/gregkh/driver-core

Pull driver core updates from Greg KH:
 "Here is the "small" driver core patches for 4.11-rc1.

  Not much here, some firmware documentation and self-test updates, a
  debugfs code formatting issue, and a new feature for call_usermodehelper
  to make it more robust on systems that want to lock it down in a more
  secure way.

  All of these have been linux-next for a while now with no reported
  issues"

* tag 'driver-core-4.11-rc1' of git://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/gregkh/driver-core:
  kernfs: handle null pointers while printing node name and path
  Introduce STATIC_USERMODEHELPER to mediate call_usermodehelper()
  Make static usermode helper binaries constant
  kmod: make usermodehelper path a const string
  firmware: revamp firmware documentation
  selftests: firmware: send expected errors to /dev/null
  selftests: firmware: only modprobe if driver is missing
  platform: Print the resource range if device failed to claim
  kref: prefer atomic_inc_not_zero to atomic_add_unless
  debugfs: improve formatting of debugfs_real_fops()

1 files changed, 30 insertions, 0 deletions

diff --git a/Documentation/driver-api/firmware/direct-fs-lookup.rst b/Documentation/driver-api/firmware/direct-fs-lookup.rst
new file mode 100644
index 000000000000..82b4d585a213
--- /dev/null
+++ b/Documentation/driver-api/firmware/direct-fs-lookup.rst
@@ -0,0 +1,30 @@
+========================
+Direct filesystem lookup
+========================
+
+Direct filesystem lookup is the most common form of firmware lookup performed
+by the kernel. The kernel looks for the firmware directly on the root
+filesystem in the paths documented in the section 'Firmware search paths'.
+The filesystem lookup is implemented in fw_get_filesystem_firmware(), it
+uses common core kernel file loader facility kernel_read_file_from_path().
+The max path allowed is PATH_MAX -- currently this is 4096 characters.
+
+It is recommended you keep /lib/firmware paths on your root filesystem,
+avoid having a separate partition for them in order to avoid possible
+races with lookups and avoid uses of the custom fallback mechanisms
+documented below.
+
+Firmware and initramfs
+----------------------
+
+Drivers which are built-in to the kernel should have the firmware integrated
+also as part of the initramfs used to boot the kernel given that otherwise
+a race is possible with loading the driver and the real rootfs not yet being
+available. Stuffing the firmware into initramfs resolves this race issue,
+however note that using initrd does not suffice to address the same race.
+
+There are circumstances that justify not wanting to include firmware into
+initramfs, such as dealing with large firmware firmware files for the
+remote-proc subsystem. For such cases using a userspace fallback mechanism
+is currently the only viable solution as only userspace can know for sure
+when the real rootfs is ready and mounted.