185 lines
7.4 KiB
Plaintext
Executable File
185 lines
7.4 KiB
Plaintext
Executable File
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Using physical DMA provided by OHCI-1394 FireWire controllers for debugging
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---------------------------------------------------------------------------
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Introduction
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------------
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Basically all FireWire controllers which are in use today are compliant
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to the OHCI-1394 specification which defines the controller to be a PCI
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bus master which uses DMA to offload data transfers from the CPU and has
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a "Physical Response Unit" which executes specific requests by employing
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PCI-Bus master DMA after applying filters defined by the OHCI-1394 driver.
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Once properly configured, remote machines can send these requests to
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ask the OHCI-1394 controller to perform read and write requests on
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physical system memory and, for read requests, send the result of
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the physical memory read back to the requester.
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With that, it is possible to debug issues by reading interesting memory
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locations such as buffers like the printk buffer or the process table.
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Retrieving a full system memory dump is also possible over the FireWire,
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using data transfer rates in the order of 10MB/s or more.
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With most FireWire controllers, memory access is limited to the low 4 GB
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of physical address space. This can be a problem on IA64 machines where
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memory is located mostly above that limit, but it is rarely a problem on
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more common hardware such as x86, x86-64 and PowerPC.
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At least LSI FW643e and FW643e2 controllers are known to support access to
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physical addresses above 4 GB, but this feature is currently not enabled by
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Linux.
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Together with a early initialization of the OHCI-1394 controller for debugging,
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this facility proved most useful for examining long debugs logs in the printk
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buffer on to debug early boot problems in areas like ACPI where the system
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fails to boot and other means for debugging (serial port) are either not
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available (notebooks) or too slow for extensive debug information (like ACPI).
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Drivers
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-------
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The firewire-ohci driver in drivers/firewire uses filtered physical
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DMA by default, which is more secure but not suitable for remote debugging.
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Pass the remote_dma=1 parameter to the driver to get unfiltered physical DMA.
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Because the firewire-ohci driver depends on the PCI enumeration to be
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completed, an initialization routine which runs pretty early has been
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implemented for x86. This routine runs long before console_init() can be
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called, i.e. before the printk buffer appears on the console.
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To activate it, enable CONFIG_PROVIDE_OHCI1394_DMA_INIT (Kernel hacking menu:
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Remote debugging over FireWire early on boot) and pass the parameter
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"ohci1394_dma=early" to the recompiled kernel on boot.
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Tools
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-----
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firescope - Originally developed by Benjamin Herrenschmidt, Andi Kleen ported
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it from PowerPC to x86 and x86_64 and added functionality, firescope can now
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be used to view the printk buffer of a remote machine, even with live update.
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Bernhard Kaindl enhanced firescope to support accessing 64-bit machines
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from 32-bit firescope and vice versa:
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- http://v3.sk/~lkundrak/firescope/
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and he implemented fast system dump (alpha version - read README.txt):
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- http://halobates.de/firewire/firedump-0.1.tar.bz2
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There is also a gdb proxy for firewire which allows to use gdb to access
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data which can be referenced from symbols found by gdb in vmlinux:
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- http://halobates.de/firewire/fireproxy-0.33.tar.bz2
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The latest version of this gdb proxy (fireproxy-0.34) can communicate (not
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yet stable) with kgdb over an memory-based communication module (kgdbom).
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Getting Started
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---------------
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The OHCI-1394 specification regulates that the OHCI-1394 controller must
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disable all physical DMA on each bus reset.
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This means that if you want to debug an issue in a system state where
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interrupts are disabled and where no polling of the OHCI-1394 controller
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for bus resets takes place, you have to establish any FireWire cable
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connections and fully initialize all FireWire hardware __before__ the
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system enters such state.
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Step-by-step instructions for using firescope with early OHCI initialization:
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1) Verify that your hardware is supported:
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Load the firewire-ohci module and check your kernel logs.
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You should see a line similar to
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firewire_ohci 0000:15:00.1: added OHCI v1.0 device as card 2, 4 IR + 4 IT
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... contexts, quirks 0x11
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when loading the driver. If you have no supported controller, many PCI,
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CardBus and even some Express cards which are fully compliant to OHCI-1394
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specification are available. If it requires no driver for Windows operating
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systems, it most likely is. Only specialized shops have cards which are not
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compliant, they are based on TI PCILynx chips and require drivers for Win-
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dows operating systems.
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The mentioned kernel log message contains the string "physUB" if the
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controller implements a writable Physical Upper Bound register. This is
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required for physical DMA above 4 GB (but not utilized by Linux yet).
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2) Establish a working FireWire cable connection:
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Any FireWire cable, as long at it provides electrically and mechanically
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stable connection and has matching connectors (there are small 4-pin and
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large 6-pin FireWire ports) will do.
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If an driver is running on both machines you should see a line like
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firewire_core 0000:15:00.1: created device fw1: GUID 00061b0020105917, S400
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on both machines in the kernel log when the cable is plugged in
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and connects the two machines.
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3) Test physical DMA using firescope:
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On the debug host, make sure that /dev/fw* is accessible,
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then start firescope:
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$ firescope
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Port 0 (/dev/fw1) opened, 2 nodes detected
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FireScope
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---------
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Target : <unspecified>
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Gen : 1
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[Ctrl-T] choose target
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[Ctrl-H] this menu
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[Ctrl-Q] quit
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------> Press Ctrl-T now, the output should be similar to:
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2 nodes available, local node is: 0
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0: ffc0, uuid: 00000000 00000000 [LOCAL]
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1: ffc1, uuid: 00279000 ba4bb801
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Besides the [LOCAL] node, it must show another node without error message.
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4) Prepare for debugging with early OHCI-1394 initialization:
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4.1) Kernel compilation and installation on debug target
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Compile the kernel to be debugged with CONFIG_PROVIDE_OHCI1394_DMA_INIT
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(Kernel hacking: Provide code for enabling DMA over FireWire early on boot)
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enabled and install it on the machine to be debugged (debug target).
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4.2) Transfer the System.map of the debugged kernel to the debug host
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Copy the System.map of the kernel be debugged to the debug host (the host
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which is connected to the debugged machine over the FireWire cable).
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5) Retrieving the printk buffer contents:
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With the FireWire cable connected, the OHCI-1394 driver on the debugging
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host loaded, reboot the debugged machine, booting the kernel which has
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CONFIG_PROVIDE_OHCI1394_DMA_INIT enabled, with the option ohci1394_dma=early.
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Then, on the debugging host, run firescope, for example by using -A:
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firescope -A System.map-of-debug-target-kernel
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Note: -A automatically attaches to the first non-local node. It only works
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reliably if only connected two machines are connected using FireWire.
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After having attached to the debug target, press Ctrl-D to view the
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complete printk buffer or Ctrl-U to enter auto update mode and get an
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updated live view of recent kernel messages logged on the debug target.
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Call "firescope -h" to get more information on firescope's options.
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Notes
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-----
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Documentation and specifications: http://halobates.de/firewire/
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FireWire is a trademark of Apple Inc. - for more information please refer to:
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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FireWire
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