ARM errata 430973 on multi platform kernels

Tony Lindgren tony at atomide.com
Wed Apr 29 07:40:12 PDT 2015


* Russell King - ARM Linux <linux at arm.linux.org.uk> [150428 11:14]:
> On Thu, Apr 23, 2015 at 07:17:28AM -0700, Tony Lindgren wrote:
> > * Russell King - ARM Linux <linux at arm.linux.org.uk> [150423 03:26]:
> > > However, I don't think anyone is willing to say that they have a
> > > solution to this problem - obviously, you can't build OMAP as a
> > > non-multiplatform kernel anymore, so in effect you can never have
> > > the kernel enable this errata.  And you can't detect whether you're
> > > running in secure mode or not.
> > > 
> > > We could do the "only write the bit if it was originally clear" but
> > > we still have the problem that doing so may cause other people
> > > regressions.
> > 
> > How about we keep the bit writing part !multiplatform conditional
> > (or even remove it) but always do the flush for ca-8?
> > 
> > Then we could also do a warning for a misconfigured ca-8 later on.
> 
> Yes, we could do this - we'll have to rely on the boot loader doing
> the right thing and setting this bit appropriately.  For those
> platforms where this doesn't apply, I don't see any solution as (iirc)
> OMAP now requires MULTIPLATFORM to be enabled.

OK, here's an updated patch. I've kept Sebastian's Tested-by as we know
the init part is a nop on n900 that he tested with.

Regards,

Tony

8< ---------------------
From: Tony Lindgren <tony at atomide.com>
Date: Mon, 27 Apr 2015 10:18:14 -0700
Subject: [PATCH] ARM: mm: Fix Cortex-A8 erratum 430973 segfaults for bootloaders and multiarch

Looks like apps can be made to segfault easily on armhf distros
just by running cpuburn-a8 in the background, then starting apt
get update unless erratum 430973 workaround is enabled. This happens
on r3p2 also, which has 430973 fixed in hardware.

Turns out the reason for this is some bootloaders incorrectly
setting the auxilary register IBE bit, which probably causes us
to hit erratum 687067 on Cortex-A8 later than r1p2.

If the bootloader incorrectly sets the IBE bit in the auxilary control
register for Cortex-A8 revisions with 430973 fixed in hardware, we
need to call flush BTAC/BTB to avoid segfaults probably caused by
erratum 687067. So let's flush BTAC/BTB unconditionally for Cortex-A8.
It won't do anything unless the IBE bit is set.

Note that we keep the erratum 430973 Kconfig option still around and
disabled for multiarch as it may be unsafe to enable for some secure
SoC. It is known safe to be enabled for n900, but won't do anything
on n900 as the IBE bit needs to be set with SMC.

Also note that SoCs probably should also add checks and print warnings
for the misconfigured IBE bit depending on the Cortex-A8 revision
so the bootloaders can be fixed Cortex-A8 revisions later than
r1p2 to not set the IBE bit.

Tested-By: Sebastian Reichel <sre at kernel.org>
Signed-off-by: Tony Lindgren <tony at atomide.com>

--- a/arch/arm/mm/proc-v7-2level.S
+++ b/arch/arm/mm/proc-v7-2level.S
@@ -36,14 +36,16 @@
  *
  *	It is assumed that:
  *	- we are not using split page tables
+ *
+ *	Note that we always need to flush BTAC/BTB if IBE is set
+ *	even on Cortex-A8 revisions not affected by 430973.
+ *	If IBE is not set, the flush BTAC/BTB won't do anything.
  */
 ENTRY(cpu_ca8_switch_mm)
 #ifdef CONFIG_MMU
 	mov	r2, #0
-#ifdef CONFIG_ARM_ERRATA_430973
 	mcr	p15, 0, r2, c7, c5, 6		@ flush BTAC/BTB
 #endif
-#endif
 ENTRY(cpu_v7_switch_mm)
 #ifdef CONFIG_MMU
 	mmid	r1, r1				@ get mm->context.id



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