diff mbox series

input: uinput: Drop checks for abs_min > abs_max

Message ID 20231218171653.141941-1-macroalpha82@gmail.com
State New
Headers show
Series input: uinput: Drop checks for abs_min > abs_max | expand

Commit Message

Chris Morgan Dec. 18, 2023, 5:16 p.m. UTC
From: Chris Morgan <macromorgan@hotmail.com>

Stop checking if the minimum abs value is greater than the maximum abs
value. When the axis is inverted this condition is allowed. Without
relaxing this check, it is not possible to use uinput on devices in
userspace with an inverted axis, such as the adc-joystick found on
many handheld gaming devices.

Signed-off-by: Chris Morgan <macromorgan@hotmail.com>
---
 drivers/input/misc/uinput.c | 9 +--------
 1 file changed, 1 insertion(+), 8 deletions(-)

Comments

Paul Cercueil Dec. 20, 2023, 1:39 p.m. UTC | #1
Hi Dmitry,

Le mardi 19 décembre 2023 à 17:53 -0800, Dmitry Torokhov a écrit :
> Hi Paul,
> 
> On Wed, Dec 20, 2023 at 01:38:39AM +0100, Paul Cercueil wrote:
> > Hi Peter,
> > 
> > Le mercredi 20 décembre 2023 à 09:51 +1000, Peter Hutterer a
> > écrit :
> > > On Mon, Dec 18, 2023 at 11:16:53AM -0600, Chris Morgan wrote:
> > > > From: Chris Morgan <macromorgan@hotmail.com>
> > > > 
> > > > Stop checking if the minimum abs value is greater than the
> > > > maximum
> > > > abs
> > > > value. When the axis is inverted this condition is allowed.
> > > > Without
> > > > relaxing this check, it is not possible to use uinput on
> > > > devices in
> > > > userspace with an inverted axis, such as the adc-joystick found
> > > > on
> > > > many handheld gaming devices.
> > > 
> > > As mentioned in the other thread [1] a fair bit of userspace
> > > relies
> > > on
> > > that general assumption so removing it will likely cause all
> > > sorts of
> > > issues.
> > 
> > There is some userspace that works with it though, so why restrict
> > it
> > artificially?
> > 
> > The fact that some other userspace code wouldn't work with it
> > sounds a
> > bit irrelevant. They just never encountered that min>max usage
> > before.
> > 
> > And removing this check won't cause all sort of issues, why would
> > it?
> > It's not like the current software actively probes min>max and
> > crash
> > badly if it doesn't return -EINVAL...
> 
> It will cause weird movements because calculations expect min be the
> minimum, and max the maximum, and not encode left/right or up/down.
> Putting this into adc joystick binding was a mistake.

I don't see why it was a mistake, it's only one of the ways to specify
that the axis is inverted. This information is between the firmware
(DT) and the kernel, that doesn't mean the information has to be
relayed as-is to the userspace.

Unlike what you wrote in your other answer, when talking about input
the kernel doesn't really normalize anything - it gives you the min/max
values, and the raw samples, not normalized samples (they don't get
translated to a pre-specified range, or even clamped).

I don't really like the idea of having the driver tamper with the
samples, but if the specification really is that max>min, then it would
be up to evdev/joydev (if the individual drivers are allowed min>max)
or adc-joystick (if they are not) to process the samples.

Cheers,
-Paul

> This is the definition of absinfo:
> 
> /**
>  * struct input_absinfo - used by EVIOCGABS/EVIOCSABS ioctls
>  * @value: latest reported value for the axis.
>  * @minimum: specifies minimum value for the axis.
>  * @maximum: specifies maximum value for the axis.
>  * @fuzz: specifies fuzz value that is used to filter noise from
>  *	the event stream.
>  * @flat: values that are within this value will be discarded by
>  *	joydev interface and reported as 0 instead.
>  * @resolution: specifies resolution for the values reported for
>  *	the axis.
>  *
>  * Note that input core does not clamp reported values to the
>  * [minimum, maximum] limits, such task is left to userspace.
> ...
>  */
> 
> (We should change wording of the last sentence to "... does not
> always
> clamp ..." since when we do inversion/swap we do clamp values.)
> 
> And note that the userspace that can handle swapped min and max will
> work fine if the kernel provides normalized data, but other software
> will/may not work.
> 
> Thanks.
>
Hans de Goede Dec. 23, 2023, 2:29 p.m. UTC | #2
Hi Paul,

On 12/20/23 14:39, Paul Cercueil wrote:
> Hi Dmitry,
> 
> Le mardi 19 décembre 2023 à 17:53 -0800, Dmitry Torokhov a écrit :
>> Hi Paul,
>>
>> On Wed, Dec 20, 2023 at 01:38:39AM +0100, Paul Cercueil wrote:
>>> Hi Peter,
>>>
>>> Le mercredi 20 décembre 2023 à 09:51 +1000, Peter Hutterer a
>>> écrit :
>>>> On Mon, Dec 18, 2023 at 11:16:53AM -0600, Chris Morgan wrote:
>>>>> From: Chris Morgan <macromorgan@hotmail.com>
>>>>>
>>>>> Stop checking if the minimum abs value is greater than the
>>>>> maximum
>>>>> abs
>>>>> value. When the axis is inverted this condition is allowed.
>>>>> Without
>>>>> relaxing this check, it is not possible to use uinput on
>>>>> devices in
>>>>> userspace with an inverted axis, such as the adc-joystick found
>>>>> on
>>>>> many handheld gaming devices.
>>>>
>>>> As mentioned in the other thread [1] a fair bit of userspace
>>>> relies
>>>> on
>>>> that general assumption so removing it will likely cause all
>>>> sorts of
>>>> issues.
>>>
>>> There is some userspace that works with it though, so why restrict
>>> it
>>> artificially?
>>>
>>> The fact that some other userspace code wouldn't work with it
>>> sounds a
>>> bit irrelevant. They just never encountered that min>max usage
>>> before.
>>>
>>> And removing this check won't cause all sort of issues, why would
>>> it?
>>> It's not like the current software actively probes min>max and
>>> crash
>>> badly if it doesn't return -EINVAL...
>>
>> It will cause weird movements because calculations expect min be the
>> minimum, and max the maximum, and not encode left/right or up/down.
>> Putting this into adc joystick binding was a mistake.
> 
> I don't see why it was a mistake, it's only one of the ways to specify
> that the axis is inverted. This information is between the firmware
> (DT) and the kernel, that doesn't mean the information has to be
> relayed as-is to the userspace.
> 
> Unlike what you wrote in your other answer, when talking about input
> the kernel doesn't really normalize anything - it gives you the min/max
> values, and the raw samples, not normalized samples (they don't get
> translated to a pre-specified range, or even clamped).
> 
> I don't really like the idea of having the driver tamper with the
> samples, but if the specification really is that max>min, then it would
> be up to evdev/joydev (if the individual drivers are allowed min>max)
> or adc-joystick (if they are not) to process the samples.

I don't see why a driver, especially a userspace driver which
then injects things back into the kernel using uinput, would
not take care of inverting the samples itself and then just
present userspace with normalized data where min is simply 0
(as result of normalization as part of inversion) and
max is (original_max - original_min).

Note that this is exactly what is being done for touchscreens,
where having the touchscreen mounted e.g. upside-down is
a long standing issue and this is thus also a long solved issue,
see: drivers/input/touchscreen.c which contains generic
code for parsing device-properties including swapped / inverted
axis as well as generic code for reporting the position to the
input core, where the helpers from drivers/input/touchscreen.c
take care of the swap + invert including normalization when
doing inversion.

Specifically this contains in touchscreen_parse_properties() :

        prop->max_x = input_abs_get_max(input, axis_x);
        prop->max_y = input_abs_get_max(input, axis_y);

        if (prop->invert_x) {
                absinfo = &input->absinfo[axis_x];
                absinfo->maximum -= absinfo->minimum;
                absinfo->minimum = 0;
        }

        if (prop->invert_y) {
                absinfo = &input->absinfo[axis_y];
                absinfo->maximum -= absinfo->minimum;
                absinfo->minimum = 0;
        }

and then when reporting touches:

void touchscreen_report_pos(struct input_dev *input,
                            const struct touchscreen_properties *prop,
                            unsigned int x, unsigned int y,
                            bool multitouch)
{
        if (prop->invert_x)
                x = prop->max_x - x;

        if (prop->invert_y)
                y = prop->max_y - y;

        if (prop->swap_x_y)
                swap(x, y);

        input_report_abs(input, multitouch ? ABS_MT_POSITION_X : ABS_X, x);
        input_report_abs(input, multitouch ? ABS_MT_POSITION_Y : ABS_Y, y);
}

One of the tasks of a driver / the kernel is to provide some
level of hardware abstraction to isolate userspace from
hw details. IMHO taking care of the axis-inversion for userspace
with something like the above is part of the kernels' HAL task.

Regards,

Hans
Paul Cercueil Dec. 23, 2023, 3:01 p.m. UTC | #3
Hi Hans,

Le samedi 23 décembre 2023 à 15:29 +0100, Hans de Goede a écrit :
> Hi Paul,
> 
> On 12/20/23 14:39, Paul Cercueil wrote:
> > Hi Dmitry,
> > 
> > Le mardi 19 décembre 2023 à 17:53 -0800, Dmitry Torokhov a écrit :
> > > Hi Paul,
> > > 
> > > On Wed, Dec 20, 2023 at 01:38:39AM +0100, Paul Cercueil wrote:
> > > > Hi Peter,
> > > > 
> > > > Le mercredi 20 décembre 2023 à 09:51 +1000, Peter Hutterer a
> > > > écrit :
> > > > > On Mon, Dec 18, 2023 at 11:16:53AM -0600, Chris Morgan wrote:
> > > > > > From: Chris Morgan <macromorgan@hotmail.com>
> > > > > > 
> > > > > > Stop checking if the minimum abs value is greater than the
> > > > > > maximum
> > > > > > abs
> > > > > > value. When the axis is inverted this condition is allowed.
> > > > > > Without
> > > > > > relaxing this check, it is not possible to use uinput on
> > > > > > devices in
> > > > > > userspace with an inverted axis, such as the adc-joystick
> > > > > > found
> > > > > > on
> > > > > > many handheld gaming devices.
> > > > > 
> > > > > As mentioned in the other thread [1] a fair bit of userspace
> > > > > relies
> > > > > on
> > > > > that general assumption so removing it will likely cause all
> > > > > sorts of
> > > > > issues.
> > > > 
> > > > There is some userspace that works with it though, so why
> > > > restrict
> > > > it
> > > > artificially?
> > > > 
> > > > The fact that some other userspace code wouldn't work with it
> > > > sounds a
> > > > bit irrelevant. They just never encountered that min>max usage
> > > > before.
> > > > 
> > > > And removing this check won't cause all sort of issues, why
> > > > would
> > > > it?
> > > > It's not like the current software actively probes min>max and
> > > > crash
> > > > badly if it doesn't return -EINVAL...
> > > 
> > > It will cause weird movements because calculations expect min be
> > > the
> > > minimum, and max the maximum, and not encode left/right or
> > > up/down.
> > > Putting this into adc joystick binding was a mistake.
> > 
> > I don't see why it was a mistake, it's only one of the ways to
> > specify
> > that the axis is inverted. This information is between the firmware
> > (DT) and the kernel, that doesn't mean the information has to be
> > relayed as-is to the userspace.
> > 
> > Unlike what you wrote in your other answer, when talking about
> > input
> > the kernel doesn't really normalize anything - it gives you the
> > min/max
> > values, and the raw samples, not normalized samples (they don't get
> > translated to a pre-specified range, or even clamped).
> > 
> > I don't really like the idea of having the driver tamper with the
> > samples, but if the specification really is that max>min, then it
> > would
> > be up to evdev/joydev (if the individual drivers are allowed
> > min>max)
> > or adc-joystick (if they are not) to process the samples.
> 
> I don't see why a driver, especially a userspace driver which
> then injects things back into the kernel using uinput, would
> not take care of inverting the samples itself and then just
> present userspace with normalized data where min is simply 0
> (as result of normalization as part of inversion) and
> max is (original_max - original_min).

Yes, I totally agree.

What I was saying is, as Chris is only "piping" events from adc-
joystick into uinput, that the problem is more that evdev/joydev don't
handle axis inversion and provide min>max values that most of the
userspace (and some kernel drivers e.g. uinput) don't support.

> Note that this is exactly what is being done for touchscreens,
> where having the touchscreen mounted e.g. upside-down is
> a long standing issue and this is thus also a long solved issue,
> see: drivers/input/touchscreen.c which contains generic
> code for parsing device-properties including swapped / inverted
> axis as well as generic code for reporting the position to the
> input core, where the helpers from drivers/input/touchscreen.c
> take care of the swap + invert including normalization when
> doing inversion.
> 
> Specifically this contains in touchscreen_parse_properties() :
> 
>         prop->max_x = input_abs_get_max(input, axis_x);
>         prop->max_y = input_abs_get_max(input, axis_y);
> 
>         if (prop->invert_x) {
>                 absinfo = &input->absinfo[axis_x];
>                 absinfo->maximum -= absinfo->minimum;
>                 absinfo->minimum = 0;
>         }
> 
>         if (prop->invert_y) {
>                 absinfo = &input->absinfo[axis_y];
>                 absinfo->maximum -= absinfo->minimum;
>                 absinfo->minimum = 0;
>         }
> 
> and then when reporting touches:
> 
> void touchscreen_report_pos(struct input_dev *input,
>                             const struct touchscreen_properties
> *prop,
>                             unsigned int x, unsigned int y,
>                             bool multitouch)
> {
>         if (prop->invert_x)
>                 x = prop->max_x - x;
> 
>         if (prop->invert_y)
>                 y = prop->max_y - y;
> 
>         if (prop->swap_x_y)
>                 swap(x, y);
> 
>         input_report_abs(input, multitouch ? ABS_MT_POSITION_X :
> ABS_X, x);
>         input_report_abs(input, multitouch ? ABS_MT_POSITION_Y :
> ABS_Y, y);
> }
> 
> One of the tasks of a driver / the kernel is to provide some
> level of hardware abstraction to isolate userspace from
> hw details. IMHO taking care of the axis-inversion for userspace
> with something like the above is part of the kernels' HAL task.

Totally agree, but this is not done anywhere, is it? evdev seems to
just pass the hardware values alongside some basic meta-data (min/max
values, fuzz etc.), it does not tamper with the data. Should evdev
handle axis inversion? Should it be in adc-joystick (and every other
driver that needs that) instead?

> 
> Regards,
> 
> Hans

Cheers,
-Paul
Hans de Goede Dec. 23, 2023, 3:16 p.m. UTC | #4
Hi,

On 12/23/23 16:01, Paul Cercueil wrote:
> Hi Hans,
> 
> Le samedi 23 décembre 2023 à 15:29 +0100, Hans de Goede a écrit :
>> Hi Paul,
>>
>> On 12/20/23 14:39, Paul Cercueil wrote:
>>> Hi Dmitry,
>>>
>>> Le mardi 19 décembre 2023 à 17:53 -0800, Dmitry Torokhov a écrit :
>>>> Hi Paul,
>>>>
>>>> On Wed, Dec 20, 2023 at 01:38:39AM +0100, Paul Cercueil wrote:
>>>>> Hi Peter,
>>>>>
>>>>> Le mercredi 20 décembre 2023 à 09:51 +1000, Peter Hutterer a
>>>>> écrit :
>>>>>> On Mon, Dec 18, 2023 at 11:16:53AM -0600, Chris Morgan wrote:
>>>>>>> From: Chris Morgan <macromorgan@hotmail.com>
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> Stop checking if the minimum abs value is greater than the
>>>>>>> maximum
>>>>>>> abs
>>>>>>> value. When the axis is inverted this condition is allowed.
>>>>>>> Without
>>>>>>> relaxing this check, it is not possible to use uinput on
>>>>>>> devices in
>>>>>>> userspace with an inverted axis, such as the adc-joystick
>>>>>>> found
>>>>>>> on
>>>>>>> many handheld gaming devices.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> As mentioned in the other thread [1] a fair bit of userspace
>>>>>> relies
>>>>>> on
>>>>>> that general assumption so removing it will likely cause all
>>>>>> sorts of
>>>>>> issues.
>>>>>
>>>>> There is some userspace that works with it though, so why
>>>>> restrict
>>>>> it
>>>>> artificially?
>>>>>
>>>>> The fact that some other userspace code wouldn't work with it
>>>>> sounds a
>>>>> bit irrelevant. They just never encountered that min>max usage
>>>>> before.
>>>>>
>>>>> And removing this check won't cause all sort of issues, why
>>>>> would
>>>>> it?
>>>>> It's not like the current software actively probes min>max and
>>>>> crash
>>>>> badly if it doesn't return -EINVAL...
>>>>
>>>> It will cause weird movements because calculations expect min be
>>>> the
>>>> minimum, and max the maximum, and not encode left/right or
>>>> up/down.
>>>> Putting this into adc joystick binding was a mistake.
>>>
>>> I don't see why it was a mistake, it's only one of the ways to
>>> specify
>>> that the axis is inverted. This information is between the firmware
>>> (DT) and the kernel, that doesn't mean the information has to be
>>> relayed as-is to the userspace.
>>>
>>> Unlike what you wrote in your other answer, when talking about
>>> input
>>> the kernel doesn't really normalize anything - it gives you the
>>> min/max
>>> values, and the raw samples, not normalized samples (they don't get
>>> translated to a pre-specified range, or even clamped).
>>>
>>> I don't really like the idea of having the driver tamper with the
>>> samples, but if the specification really is that max>min, then it
>>> would
>>> be up to evdev/joydev (if the individual drivers are allowed
>>> min>max)
>>> or adc-joystick (if they are not) to process the samples.
>>
>> I don't see why a driver, especially a userspace driver which
>> then injects things back into the kernel using uinput, would
>> not take care of inverting the samples itself and then just
>> present userspace with normalized data where min is simply 0
>> (as result of normalization as part of inversion) and
>> max is (original_max - original_min).
> 
> Yes, I totally agree.
> 
> What I was saying is, as Chris is only "piping" events from adc-
> joystick into uinput, that the problem is more that evdev/joydev don't
> handle axis inversion and provide min>max values that most of the
> userspace (and some kernel drivers e.g. uinput) don't support.

Ah I see, that sounds like a joydev adc-joystick / driver bug
to me then.

>> Note that this is exactly what is being done for touchscreens,
>> where having the touchscreen mounted e.g. upside-down is
>> a long standing issue and this is thus also a long solved issue,
>> see: drivers/input/touchscreen.c which contains generic
>> code for parsing device-properties including swapped / inverted
>> axis as well as generic code for reporting the position to the
>> input core, where the helpers from drivers/input/touchscreen.c
>> take care of the swap + invert including normalization when
>> doing inversion.
>>
>> Specifically this contains in touchscreen_parse_properties() :
>>
>>         prop->max_x = input_abs_get_max(input, axis_x);
>>         prop->max_y = input_abs_get_max(input, axis_y);
>>
>>         if (prop->invert_x) {
>>                 absinfo = &input->absinfo[axis_x];
>>                 absinfo->maximum -= absinfo->minimum;
>>                 absinfo->minimum = 0;
>>         }
>>
>>         if (prop->invert_y) {
>>                 absinfo = &input->absinfo[axis_y];
>>                 absinfo->maximum -= absinfo->minimum;
>>                 absinfo->minimum = 0;
>>         }
>>
>> and then when reporting touches:
>>
>> void touchscreen_report_pos(struct input_dev *input,
>>                             const struct touchscreen_properties
>> *prop,
>>                             unsigned int x, unsigned int y,
>>                             bool multitouch)
>> {
>>         if (prop->invert_x)
>>                 x = prop->max_x - x;
>>
>>         if (prop->invert_y)
>>                 y = prop->max_y - y;
>>
>>         if (prop->swap_x_y)
>>                 swap(x, y);
>>
>>         input_report_abs(input, multitouch ? ABS_MT_POSITION_X :
>> ABS_X, x);
>>         input_report_abs(input, multitouch ? ABS_MT_POSITION_Y :
>> ABS_Y, y);
>> }
>>
>> One of the tasks of a driver / the kernel is to provide some
>> level of hardware abstraction to isolate userspace from
>> hw details. IMHO taking care of the axis-inversion for userspace
>> with something like the above is part of the kernels' HAL task.
> 
> Totally agree, but this is not done anywhere, is it? evdev seems to
> just pass the hardware values alongside some basic meta-data (min/max
> values, fuzz etc.), it does not tamper with the data. Should evdev
> handle axis inversion? Should it be in adc-joystick (and every other
> driver that needs that) instead?

For touchcreens we have chosen to have a set of generic helpers
and then make using those helpers the responsibility of the driver.

Part of the reason for doing this is because some touchscreen drivers
already were doing axis inversion inside the driver triggering on
things like e.g. DMI matches, or maybe custom pre standardization
device properties, etc.

So the decision was made to add a set of helpers and convert drivers
one by one. Where drivers can e.g. still set prop->invert_x manually,
but then they also need to take care of the min/max adjustments
manually (min is typically 0 for touchscreens though).

I expect that there will also be enough existing special handling
in the joystick code that piece-meal conversion using helpers
is likely best.

With that said having axis inversion support in the evdev core
does sound interesting, but that means also storing the max-value
inside the core for abs axis and this will likely be a big
change / lots of work.

Regards,

Hans
diff mbox series

Patch

diff --git a/drivers/input/misc/uinput.c b/drivers/input/misc/uinput.c
index d98212d55108..e90dbf2c0b34 100644
--- a/drivers/input/misc/uinput.c
+++ b/drivers/input/misc/uinput.c
@@ -403,14 +403,7 @@  static int uinput_validate_absinfo(struct input_dev *dev, unsigned int code,
 	min = abs->minimum;
 	max = abs->maximum;
 
-	if ((min != 0 || max != 0) && max < min) {
-		printk(KERN_DEBUG
-		       "%s: invalid abs[%02x] min:%d max:%d\n",
-		       UINPUT_NAME, code, min, max);
-		return -EINVAL;
-	}
-
-	if (!check_sub_overflow(max, min, &range) && abs->flat > range) {
+	if (!check_sub_overflow(max, min, &range) && abs->flat > abs(range)) {
 		printk(KERN_DEBUG
 		       "%s: abs_flat #%02x out of range: %d (min:%d/max:%d)\n",
 		       UINPUT_NAME, code, abs->flat, min, max);