Managing Ownership of the Framebuffer Aperture¶

A graphics device might be supported by different drivers, but only one driver can be active at any given time. Many systems load a generic graphics drivers, such as EFI-GOP or VESA, early during the boot process. During later boot stages, they replace the generic driver with a dedicated, hardware-specific driver. To take over the device, the dedicated driver first has to remove the generic driver. Aperture functions manage ownership of framebuffer memory and hand-over between drivers.

Graphics drivers should call aperture_remove_conflicting_devices() at the top of their probe function. The function removes any generic driver that is currently associated with the given framebuffer memory. An example for a graphics device on the platform bus is shown below.

static int example_probe(struct platform_device *pdev)
{
        struct resource *mem;
        resource_size_t base, size;
        int ret;

        mem = platform_get_resource(pdev, IORESOURCE_MEM, 0);
        if (!mem)
                return -ENODEV;
        base = mem->start;
        size = resource_size(mem);

        ret = aperture_remove_conflicting_devices(base, size, "example");
        if (ret)
                return ret;

        // Initialize the hardware
        ...

        return 0;
}

static const struct platform_driver example_driver = {
        .probe = example_probe,
        ...
};

The given example reads the platform device’s I/O-memory range from the device instance. An active framebuffer will be located within this range. The call to aperture_remove_conflicting_devices() releases drivers that have previously claimed ownership of the range and are currently driving output on the framebuffer. If successful, the new driver can take over the device.

While the given example uses a platform device, the aperture helpers work with every bus that has an addressable framebuffer. In the case of PCI, device drivers can also call aperture_remove_conflicting_pci_devices() and let the function detect the apertures automatically. Device drivers without knowledge of the framebuffer’s location can call aperture_remove_all_conflicting_devices(), which removes all known devices.

Drivers that are susceptible to being removed by other drivers, such as generic EFI or VESA drivers, have to register themselves as owners of their framebuffer apertures. Ownership of the framebuffer memory is achieved by calling devm_aperture_acquire_for_platform_device(). If successful, the driver is the owner of the framebuffer range. The function fails if the framebuffer is already owned by another driver. See below for an example.

static int generic_probe(struct platform_device *pdev)
{
        struct resource *mem;
        resource_size_t base, size;

        mem = platform_get_resource(pdev, IORESOURCE_MEM, 0);
        if (!mem)
                return -ENODEV;
        base = mem->start;
        size = resource_size(mem);

        ret = devm_aperture_acquire_for_platform_device(pdev, base, size);
        if (ret)
                return ret;

        // Initialize the hardware
        ...

        return 0;
}

static int generic_remove(struct platform_device *)
{
        // Hot-unplug the device
        ...

        return 0;
}

static const struct platform_driver generic_driver = {
        .probe = generic_probe,
        .remove = generic_remove,
        ...
};

The similar to the previous example, the generic driver claims ownership of the framebuffer memory from its probe function. This will fail if the memory range, or parts of it, is already owned by another driver.

If successful, the generic driver is now subject to forced removal by another driver. This only works for platform drivers that support hot unplugging. When a driver calls aperture_remove_conflicting_devices() et al for the registered framebuffer range, the aperture helpers call platform_device_unregister() and the generic driver unloads itself. The generic driver also has to provide a remove function to make this work. Once hot unplugged from hardware, it may not access the device’s registers, framebuffer memory, ROM, etc afterwards.

int aperture_remove_all_conflicting_devices(const char *name)¶

remove all existing framebuffers

int devm_aperture_acquire_for_platform_device(struct platform_device *pdev, resource_size_t base, resource_size_t size)¶

Acquires ownership of an aperture on behalf of a platform device.

int aperture_remove_conflicting_devices(resource_size_t base, resource_size_t size, const char *name)¶

remove devices in the given range

int __aperture_remove_legacy_vga_devices(struct pci_dev *pdev)¶

remove legacy VGA devices of a PCI devices

int aperture_remove_conflicting_pci_devices(struct pci_dev *pdev, const char *name)¶

remove existing framebuffers for PCI devices