Linux Device Tree: What those status = “okay” are about

There are a lot of “okay” assignments in the kernel’s device tree. For example, arch/arm/boot/dts/zynq-zed.dts starts with

/dts-v1/;
#include "zynq-7000.dtsi"

and later on there’s, among others,

&sdhci0 {
	status = "okay";
};

&uart1 {
	status = "okay";
};

&usb0 {
	status = "okay";
	dr_mode = "host";
	usb-phy = <&usb_phy0>;
};

Let’s look on the last one, relating to the usb0 label. In zynq-7000.dtsi, there’s

		usb0: usb@e0002000 {
			compatible = "xlnx,zynq-usb-2.20a", "chipidea,usb2";
			status = "disabled";
			clocks = <&clkc 28>;
			interrupt-parent = <&intc>;
			interrupts = <0 21 4>;
			reg = <0xe0002000 0x1000>;
			phy_type = "ulpi";
		};

So the “okay” assignment in zynq-zed.dts overrides the one in zynq-7000.dtsi, “disabled”.

As explained on this page, if the “status” property is present, it must be “ok” or “okay”, or the device entry node is ignored (or should be). This allows the .dtsi file to include all possible hardware entries, and keep them “disabled”, and let the .dts file including it hand-pick those required, only by changing the “status”.

And indeed, in drivers/of/base.c it says

/**
 *  of_device_is_available - check if a device is available for use
 *
 *  @device: Node to check for availability
 *
 *  Returns true if the status property is absent or set to "okay" or "ok",
 *  false otherwise
 */
bool of_device_is_available(const struct device_node *device)
{
	unsigned long flags;
	bool res;

	raw_spin_lock_irqsave(&devtree_lock, flags);
	res = __of_device_is_available(device);
	raw_spin_unlock_irqrestore(&devtree_lock, flags);
	return res;

}
EXPORT_SYMBOL(of_device_is_available);

and

/**
 *  __of_device_is_available - check if a device is available for use
 *
 *  @device: Node to check for availability, with locks already held
 *
 *  Returns true if the status property is absent or set to "okay" or "ok",
 *  false otherwise
 */
static bool __of_device_is_available(const struct device_node *device)
{
	const char *status;
	int statlen;

	if (!device)
		return false;

	status = __of_get_property(device, "status", &statlen);
	if (status == NULL)
		return true;

	if (statlen > 0) {
		if (!strcmp(status, "okay") || !strcmp(status, "ok"))
			return true;
	}

	return false;
}

This feature was added to the kernel back in 2008 in commit 834d97d452208279edf11c57eca150360d2dd1d6, but it seems it took some time before it was actually adopted.

Note that when there’s no “status” entry, it’s treated as “okay”. This retains backward compatibility with DTS files that don’t care much about this feature.