[PATCH] cxl: Perform NULL check for 'cxl_afu *' at various places in cxl

[Vaibhav Jain]

Thanks for reviewing this patch Fred,

Frederic Barrat <fbarrat at linux.vnet.ibm.com> writes:

> So we are calling functions with an invalid afu argument. We can verify 
> in the callees the value of the afu pointer, like you're doing here, but 
> why not tackle it at source and avoid calling the function in the first 
> place?
Couple of reasons:
* Having checks for NULL afu at the call sites rather than the functions
  being called will lead to these checks scattered at more than a few
  places in code. Many of these functions are called via indirect branch
  from cxl_backend_ops and have their call sites scattered in the
  code. Having this check in the called functions is a much smaller change
  in comparison.

* Some of these functions are called are called from outside CXL e.g
  cxl_dev_context_init(). So putting the NULL check at every caller site
  might not be possible.

* Some funtions need to handle AFU init failures in special way e.g like
  cxl_vphb_error_detected() need to force a card hotplug so that AFU
  reinit can be tried.

* None of these functions are in any hotpath in the code so having an
  extra check at the beginning of the code wont have a much performance
  impact.

-- 
Vaibhav Jain <vaibhav at linux.vnet.ibm.com>
Linux Technology Center, IBM India Pvt. Ltd.