FAILED: patch "[PATCH] nvmem: layouts: u-boot-env: remove crc32 endianness" failed to apply to 6.1-stable tree

The patch below does not apply to the 6.1-stable tree.
If someone wants it applied there, or to any other stable or longterm tree, then please email the backport, including the original git commit id to <[email protected]>.

To reproduce the conflict and resubmit, you may use the following commands:

git fetch https://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/stable/linux.git/ linux-6.1.y
git checkout FETCH_HEAD
git cherry-pick -x 2d7521aa26ec2dc8b877bb2d1f2611a2df49a3cf
# <resolve conflicts, build, test, etc.>
git commit -s
git send-email --to '<[email protected]>' --in-reply-to '2025072117-afraid-cyclic-e53c@gregkh' --subject-prefix 'PATCH 6.1.y' HEAD^..

Possible dependencies:

thanks,

greg k-h

------------------ original commit in Linus's tree ------------------

From 2d7521aa26ec2dc8b877bb2d1f2611a2df49a3cf Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001
From: "Michael C. Pratt" <[email protected]>
Date: Wed, 16 Jul 2025 15:42:10 +0100
Subject: [PATCH] nvmem: layouts: u-boot-env: remove crc32 endianness
conversion

On 11 Oct 2022, it was reported that the crc32 verification of the u-boot environment failed only on big-endian systems for the u-boot-env nvmem layout driver with the following error.

Invalid calculated CRC32: 0x88cd6f09 (expected: 0x096fcd88)

This problem has been present since the driver was introduced, and before it was made into a layout driver.

The suggested fix at the time was to use further endianness conversion macros in order to have both the stored and calculated crc32 values to compare always represented in the system's endianness. This was not accepted due to sparse warnings
and some disagreement on how to handle the situation.
Later on in a newer revision of the patch, it was proposed to use cpu_to_le32() for both values to compare instead of le32_to_cpu() and store the values as __le32 type to remove compilation errors.

The necessity of this is based on the assumption that the use of crc32() requires endianness conversion because the algorithm uses little-endian, however, this does not prove to be the case and the issue is unrelated.

Upon inspecting the current kernel code,
there already is an existing use of le32_to_cpu() in this driver, which suggests there already is special handling for big-endian systems, however, it is big-endian systems that have the problem.

This, being the only functional difference between architectures in the driver combined with the fact that the suggested fix was to use the exact same endianness conversion for the values brings up the possibility that it was not necessary to begin with, as the same endianness conversion for two values expected to be the same is expected to be equivalent to no conversion at all.

After inspecting the u-boot environment of devices of both endianness and trying to remove the existing endianness conversion,
the problem is resolved in an equivalent way as the other suggested fixes.

Ultimately, it seems that u-boot is agnostic to endianness at least for the purpose of environment variables.
In other words, u-boot reads and writes the stored crc32 value with the same endianness that the crc32 value is calculated with in whichever endianness a certain architecture runs on.

Therefore, the u-boot-env driver does not need to convert endianness. Remove the usage of endianness macros in the u-boot-env driver, and change the type of local variables to maintain the same return type.

If there is a special situation in the case of endianness,
it would be a corner case and should be handled by a unique "compatible".

Even though it is not necessary to use endianness conversion macros here, it may be useful to use them in the future for consistent error printing.

index 436426d4e8f9..8571aac56295 100644
@@ -92,7 +92,7 @@ int u_boot_env_parse(struct device *dev, struct nvmem_device *nvmem,
 	size_t crc32_data_offset;
 	size_t crc32_data_len;
 	size_t crc32_offset;
-	__le32 *crc32_addr;
+	uint32_t *crc32_addr;
 	size_t data_offset;
 	size_t data_len;
 	size_t dev_size;

@@ -143,8 +143,8 @@ int u_boot_env_parse(struct device *dev, struct nvmem_device *nvmem,
 		goto err_kfree;
 	}
 
-	crc32_addr = (__le32 *)(buf + crc32_offset);
-	crc32 = le32_to_cpu(*crc32_addr);
+	crc32_addr = (uint32_t *)(buf + crc32_offset);
+	crc32 = *crc32_addr;
 	crc32_data_len = dev_size - crc32_data_offset;
 	data_len = dev_size - data_offset;
 

From: "Michael C. Pratt" <[email protected]>

[ Upstream commit 2d7521aa26ec2dc8b877bb2d1f2611a2df49a3cf ]

On 11 Oct 2022, it was reported that the crc32 verification of the u-boot environment failed only on big-endian systems for the u-boot-env nvmem layout driver with the following error.

Invalid calculated CRC32: 0x88cd6f09 (expected: 0x096fcd88)

This problem has been present since the driver was introduced, and before it was made into a layout driver.

The suggested fix at the time was to use further endianness conversion macros in order to have both the stored and calculated crc32 values to compare always represented in the system's endianness. This was not accepted due to sparse warnings
and some disagreement on how to handle the situation.
Later on in a newer revision of the patch, it was proposed to use cpu_to_le32() for both values to compare instead of le32_to_cpu() and store the values as __le32 type to remove compilation errors.

The necessity of this is based on the assumption that the use of crc32() requires endianness conversion because the algorithm uses little-endian, however, this does not prove to be the case and the issue is unrelated.

Upon inspecting the current kernel code,
there already is an existing use of le32_to_cpu() in this driver, which suggests there already is special handling for big-endian systems, however, it is big-endian systems that have the problem.

This, being the only functional difference between architectures in the driver combined with the fact that the suggested fix was to use the exact same endianness conversion for the values brings up the possibility that it was not necessary to begin with, as the same endianness conversion for two values expected to be the same is expected to be equivalent to no conversion at all.

After inspecting the u-boot environment of devices of both endianness and trying to remove the existing endianness conversion,
the problem is resolved in an equivalent way as the other suggested fixes.

Ultimately, it seems that u-boot is agnostic to endianness at least for the purpose of environment variables.
In other words, u-boot reads and writes the stored crc32 value with the same endianness that the crc32 value is calculated with in whichever endianness a certain architecture runs on.

Therefore, the u-boot-env driver does not need to convert endianness. Remove the usage of endianness macros in the u-boot-env driver, and change the type of local variables to maintain the same return type.

If there is a special situation in the case of endianness,
it would be a corner case and should be handled by a unique "compatible".

Even though it is not necessary to use endianness conversion macros here, it may be useful to use them in the future for consistent error printing.

---
 drivers/nvmem/u-boot-env.c | 2 +-
 1 file changed, 1 insertion(+), 1 deletion(-)

index 4fdbdccebda16..3d86dcd01ecf1 100644
@@ -139,7 +139,7 @@ static int u_boot_env_parse(struct u_boot_env *priv)
 		data_offset = offsetof(struct u_boot_env_image_redundant, data);
 		break;
 	}
-	crc32 = le32_to_cpu(*(__le32 *)(buf + crc32_offset));
+	crc32 = *(uint32_t *)(buf + crc32_offset);
 	crc32_data_len = priv->mtd->size - crc32_data_offset;
 	data_len = priv->mtd->size - data_offset;
 

2.39.5