A brief introduction to the expose and manage PCI device reset project

Background

PCI and PCIe devices may support a number of possible reset mechanisms, for example Function Level Reset (FLR) provided via Advanced Feature or PCIe capabilities, Power Management reset, bus reset, or device specific reset. Currently the PCI subsystem creates a policy prioritizing these reset methods which provides neither visibility nor control to userspace. This project would work to expose the reset methods available per device to userspace, likely via sysfs, and allow a administrative user or device owner to have some ability to manage per device reset method priorities or exclusions.

This feature aims to allow greater control of a device for use cases as device assignment, where specific device or platform issues may interact poorly with a given reset method, and for which device specific quirks have not been developed.