[alsa-devel] ASoC: no-pcm (backend) error propagation

[Frkuska, Joshua]

Hello,

I am working off of the 3.5.7 branch of the kernel using a frontend-backend approach for my driver. No additional patches have been added for ASoC/ALSA from the 3.5.7 kernel branch.

My question relates to the way the no-pcm (backend) propagates errors to the front end. My FE(frontend) consists of a cpu-dai, a pcm platform driver, and a dummy-codec. My BE(backend) consists of another cpu-dai, a non-pcm platform driver, and a real codec.
The non-pcm operates with the dmaengine but just in an autonomous fashion external to the PCM's knowledge.

I have the pcm-platform driver passing data to the FE cpu-dai and the backend platform then takes the data from the frontend's cpu-dai and passes it on to the BE cpu-dai, which then configures the codec-dai to get output.

In the frontend if/whenever there is an underrun error in the cpu-dai, I can directly call snd_pcm_stop to stop the stream and report the error state. I can do this because the substream->ops have properly been defined in the frontend pcm. However, in the backend, the substream->ops never get initialized and rightfully so since there isn't a valid pcm for the backend.

My question is, what is the correct/any way to let the frontend PCM stream know that an underrun has occurred in the backend? Is there a mechanism to handle this in ASoC? Looking through the code, I cannot find such a mechanism. I have a feeling that there should be something like snd_soc_pcm_stop to check to see if we are in a FE/BE configuration and act accordingly to stop the FE PCM stream and report errors.

Again, perhaps such a mechanism exists and if so any help would be appreciated.

Thanks for your time and any comments/suggestions,

Joshua