PCI: remove initial bios sort of PCI devices on x86

We currently keep 2 lists of PCI devices in the system, one in the
driver core, and one all on its own.  This second list is sorted at boot
time, in "BIOS" order, to try to remain compatible with older kernels
(2.2 and earlier days).  There was also a "nosort" option to turn this
sorting off, to remain compatible with even older kernel versions, but
that just ends up being what we have been doing from 2.5 days...

Unfortunately, the second list of devices is not really ever used to 
determine the probing order of PCI devices or drivers[1].  That is done
using the driver core list instead.  This change happened back in the
early 2.5 days.

Relying on BIOS ording for the binding of drivers to specific device
names is problematic for many reasons, and userspace tools like udev
exist to properly name devices in a persistant manner if that is needed,
no reliance on the BIOS is needed.

Matt Domsch and others at Dell noticed this back in 2006, and added a
boot option to sort the PCI device lists (both of them) in a
breadth-first manner to help remain compatible with the 2.4 order, if
needed for any reason.  This option is not going away, as some systems
rely on them.

This patch removes the sorting of the internal PCI device list in "BIOS"
mode, as it's not needed at all anymore, and hasn't for many years.
I've also removed the PCI flags for this from some other arches that for
some reason defined them, but never used them.

This should not change the ordering of any drivers or device probing.

[1] The old-style pci_get_device and pci_find_device() still used this
sorting order, but there are very few drivers that use these functions,
as they are deprecated for use in this manner.  If for some reason, a
driver rely on the order and uses these functions, the breadth-first
boot option will resolve any problem.

Cc: Matt Domsch <Matt_Domsch@dell.com>
Signed-off-by: Greg Kroah-Hartman <gregkh@suse.de>

1 files changed, 0 insertions, 4 deletions

diff --git a/Documentation/kernel-parameters.txt b/Documentation/kernel-parameters.txt
index 4b0f1ae31a4..e30d8fe4e4b 100644
--- a/Documentation/kernel-parameters.txt
+++ b/Documentation/kernel-parameters.txt
@@ -1461,10 +1461,6 @@ and is between 256 and 4096 characters. It is defined in the file
 		nomsi		[MSI] If the PCI_MSI kernel config parameter is
 				enabled, this kernel boot option can be used to
 				disable the use of MSI interrupts system-wide.
-		nosort		[X86-32] Don't sort PCI devices according to
-				order given by the PCI BIOS. This sorting is
-				done to get a device order compatible with
-				older kernels.
 		biosirq		[X86-32] Use PCI BIOS calls to get the interrupt
 				routing table. These calls are known to be buggy
 				on several machines and they hang the machine