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Bug in the _save_fp_context.

DISCUSSION Carsten Langgaard 3 participants 6 messages Mar 19, 2001 MIPS

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#0 lore raw

I think there is a bug in the _save_fp_context function in arch/mips/kernel/r4k_fpu.S

The problem is the following piece of code:

jr ra
.set nomacro
EX(sw t0,SC_FPC_EIR(a0))
nop
.set macro

First of all what should the ".set nomacro" do?
If it means that the EX macro shouldn't be used then this entry wouldn't get into __ex_table, which would be wrong.
But it look like it uses the macro anyway, regardless of the ".set nomacro", at least with the compiler I use.
Never the less we do not handle entries in the __ex_table which is located in a branch delay.
So we need to handle the situation where we take a page fault on an instruction which is located in a brach delay slot, or we don't put the "potential" faulting instruction in a delay slot.

Any ideas, how we should handle this in a nice and clean way?

/Carsten

--

_    _ ____  ___   Carsten Langgaard   Mailto:[email protected]
|\  /|||___)(___   MIPS Denmark        Direct: +45 4486 5527
| \/ |||    ____)  Lautrupvang 4B      Switch: +45 4486 5555
  TECHNOLOGIES     2750 Ballerup       Fax...: +45 4486 5556
                   Denmark             http://www.mips.com
#1 lore raw
Quoted 11 lines

I think there is a bug in the _save_fp_context function in arch/mips/kernel/r4k_fpu.S

The problem is the following piece of code:

jr ra
.set nomacro
EX(sw t0,SC_FPC_EIR(a0))
nop
.set macro

Quoted 5 lines

First of all what should the ".set nomacro" do?
If it means that the EX macro shouldn't be used then this entry wouldn't get into __ex_table, which would be wrong.
But it look like it uses the macro anyway, regardless of the ".set nomacro", at least with the compiler I use.

Not surprising, really. "EX" is presumably a cpp macro that gets expanded by gcc from the .S file, based on some include file. .set directives affect only the assembler, and would inhibit assembler-level macros only. I'm not sure just what the definition of an assembler macro would be - it may or may not include pseudo-instructions like "la" or "li 32_bit_constant". I *think* that what the author was trying to do here was to ensure that the "sw" instruction in the EX expansion was really and truly a single instruction.

Quoted 7 lines

Never the less we do not handle entries in the __ex_table which is located in a branch delay.
So we need to handle the situation where we take a page fault on an instruction which is located in a brach delay slot, or we don't put the "potential" faulting instruction in a delay slot.

Any ideas, how we should handle this in a nice and clean way?

Is the __ex_table really ending up in the delay slot? Just looking at the source, I have the impression that the "sw t0,..." instruction should be in the delay slot, followed by the __ex_table.

On another topic, now that I've patched the kernel to turn off the stupid stuck interrupt on my Malta board, I've realized that I can't just connect my old Atlas SCSI disk. I'm torn between ordering a Tekram 390 PCI SCSI card, which should be able to use our "MIPS safe" NCR driver as-is (I hope) and buying an IDE disk and going through the network install ritual. Which do you recommend? One thing I really never knew was just what kernel config options I need to select to build a kernel that can do the NFS-root bootstrap. Can you help me there?

Regards,

Kevin K.

#2 lore raw

Oops! I hadn't noticed that Carsten had copied the Linux-MIPS mailing list on this, so I treated it as a point-to-point communication. The rest of you can ignore my last paragraph!

Kevin K.

----- Original Message -----
From: "Kevin D. Kissell" <[email protected]>
To: "Carsten Langgaard" <[email protected]>; <[email protected]>
Sent: Monday, March 19, 2001 4:43 PM
Subject: Re: Bug in the _save_fp_context.

Quoted 57 lines
Quoted 11 lines

I think there is a bug in the _save_fp_context function in arch/mips/kernel/r4k_fpu.S

The problem is the following piece of code:

jr ra
.set nomacro
EX(sw t0,SC_FPC_EIR(a0))
nop
.set macro

Quoted 5 lines

First of all what should the ".set nomacro" do?
If it means that the EX macro shouldn't be used then this entry wouldn't get into __ex_table, which would be wrong.
But it look like it uses the macro anyway, regardless of the ".set nomacro", at least with the compiler I use.

Not surprising, really. "EX" is presumably a cpp macro that gets expanded by gcc from the .S file, based on some include file. .set directives affect only the assembler, and would inhibit assembler-level macros only. I'm not sure just what the definition of an assembler macro would be - it may or may not include pseudo-instructions like "la" or "li 32_bit_constant". I *think* that what the author was trying to do here was to ensure that the "sw" instruction in the EX expansion was really and truly a single instruction.

Quoted 7 lines

Never the less we do not handle entries in the __ex_table which is located in a branch delay.
So we need to handle the situation where we take a page fault on an instruction which is located in a brach delay slot, or we don't put the "potential" faulting instruction in a delay slot.

Any ideas, how we should handle this in a nice and clean way?

Is the __ex_table really ending up in the delay slot? Just looking at the source, I have the impression that the "sw t0,..." instruction should be in the delay slot, followed by the __ex_table.

On another topic, now that I've patched the kernel to turn off the stupid stuck interrupt on my Malta board, I've realized that I can't just connect my old Atlas SCSI disk. I'm torn between ordering a Tekram 390 PCI SCSI card, which should be able to use our "MIPS safe" NCR driver as-is (I hope) and buying an IDE disk and going through the network install ritual. Which do you recommend? One thing I really never knew was just what kernel config options I need to select to build a kernel that can do the NFS-root bootstrap. Can you help me there?

Regards,

Kevin K.

#3 lore raw
Quoted 8 lines · Kevin D. Kissell

Oops! I hadn't noticed that Carsten had copied the Linux-MIPS mailing list on this, so I treated it as a point-to-point communication. The rest of you can ignore my last paragraph!

Kevin K.

Oops! Please ignore my previous reply too. :-)

Jun

#4 lore raw
In reply to Kevin D. Kissell
Quoted 34 lines · Kevin D. Kissell
Quoted 11 lines

I think there is a bug in the _save_fp_context function in arch/mips/kernel/r4k_fpu.S

The problem is the following piece of code:

jr ra
.set nomacro
EX(sw t0,SC_FPC_EIR(a0))
nop
.set macro

Quoted 5 lines

First of all what should the ".set nomacro" do?
If it means that the EX macro shouldn't be used then this entry wouldn't get into __ex_table, which would be wrong.
But it look like it uses the macro anyway, regardless of the ".set nomacro", at least with the compiler I use.

Not surprising, really. "EX" is presumably a cpp macro that gets expanded by gcc from the .S file, based on some include file. .set directives affect only the assembler, and would inhibit assembler-level macros only. I'm not sure just what the definition of an assembler macro would be - it may or may not include pseudo-instructions like "la" or "li 32_bit_constant". I *think* that what the author was trying to do here was to ensure that the "sw" instruction in the EX expansion was really and truly a single instruction.

Quoted 6 lines

Never the less we do not handle entries in the __ex_table which is located in a branch delay.
So we need to handle the situation where we take a page fault on an instruction which is located in a brach delay slot, or we don't put the "potential" faulting instruction in a delay slot.

Quoted 6 lines
Quoted 1 line

Any ideas, how we should handle this in a nice and clean way?

Is the __ex_table really ending up in the delay slot? Just looking at the source, I have the impression that the "sw t0,..." instruction should be in the delay slot, followed by the __ex_table.

The problem is that the address of the delay slot is put in the __ex_table and then we take a page fault EPC is pointing at the jr instruction and not the delay slot.
This result in a miss match when we try to lookup in __ex_table, resulting in a kernel crash.

The faulting situation look like this:
EPC = address of delay slot
entry in __ex_table = address of delay slot - 4

Hopes that clarify it a bit more.

Quoted 13 lines

On another topic, now that I've patched the kernel to turn off the stupid stuck interrupt on my Malta board, I've realized that I can't just connect my old Atlas SCSI disk. I'm torn between ordering a Tekram 390 PCI SCSI card, which should be able to use our "MIPS safe" NCR driver as-is (I hope) and buying an IDE disk and going through the network install ritual. Which do you recommend? One thing I really never knew was just what kernel config options I need to select to build a kernel that can do the NFS-root bootstrap. Can you help me there?

Quoted 3 lines

Regards,

Kevin K.

--

_    _ ____  ___   Carsten Langgaard   Mailto:[email protected]
|\  /|||___)(___   MIPS Denmark        Direct: +45 4486 5527
| \/ |||    ____)  Lautrupvang 4B      Switch: +45 4486 5555
  TECHNOLOGIES     2750 Ballerup       Fax...: +45 4486 5556
                   Denmark             http://www.mips.com
#5 lore raw

SCSI card [Re: Bug in the _save_fp_context.]

In reply to Kevin D. Kissell
Quoted 12 lines · Kevin D. Kissell

On another topic, now that I've patched the kernel to turn off the stupid stuck interrupt on my Malta board, I've realized that I can't just connect my old Atlas SCSI disk. I'm torn between ordering a Tekram 390 PCI SCSI card, which should be able to use our "MIPS safe" NCR driver as-is (I hope) and buying an IDE disk and going through the network install ritual. Which do you recommend? One thing I really never knew was just what kernel config options I need to select to build a kernel that can do the NFS-root bootstrap. Can you help me there?

Kevin,

If you store your kernel image on flash and boots from there, using a local hard disk is not a bad idea. I recently used a SCSI card based on NCR 53C895A. I have to turn off some optimization in the driver in order to get it work. See some related configs below.

CONFIG_SCSI_NCR53C8XX=y
# CONFIG_SCSI_SYM53C8XX is not set
CONFIG_SCSI_NCR53C8XX_DEFAULT_TAGS=0
CONFIG_SCSI_NCR53C8XX_MAX_TAGS=32
CONFIG_SCSI_NCR53C8XX_SYNC=0

In general NFS root is always easier to get kernel going. Many defconfigs under arch/mips/ already have NFS root fs configured as default, at least in the two I put in, DDB5476 and ocelot.

Jun