[PATCH] 8250 UART backup timer

[PATCH] 8250 UART backup timer

The patch below works around a minor bug found in the UART of the remote
management card used in many HP ia64 and parisc servers (aka the Diva
UARTs).  The problem is that the UART does not reassert the THRE interrupt
if it has been previously cleared and the IIR THRI bit is re-enabled.  This
can produce a very annoying failure mode when used as a serial console,
allowing a boot/reboot to hang indefinitely until an RX interrupt kicks it
into working again (ie.  an unattended reboot could stall).

To solve this problem, a backup timer is introduced that runs alongside the
standard interrupt driven mechanism.  This timer wakes up periodically,
checks for a hang condition and gets characters moving again.  This backup
mechanism is only enabled if the UART is detected as having this problem,
so systems without these UARTs will have no additional overhead.

This version of the patch incorporates previous comments from Pavel and
removes races in the bug detection code.  The test is now done before the
irq linking to prevent races with interrupt handler clearing the THRE
interrupt.  Short delays and syncs are also added to ensure the device is
able to update register state before the result is tested.

Aristeu says:

  this was tested on the following HP machines and solved the problem:
  rx2600, rx2620, rx1600 and rx1620s.

hpa says:

  I have seen this same bug in soft UART IP from "a major vendor."

Signed-off-by: Alex Williamson <alex.williamson@hp.com>
Cc: "H. Peter Anvin" <hpa@zytor.com>
Cc: Russell King <rmk@arm.linux.org.uk>
Acked-by: Aristeu Sergio Rozanski Filho <aris@cathedrallabs.org>
Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@linux-foundation.org>
Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>