ARM64: Disabling warnings about deprecated armv8 instructions

[Alexander Stein]

 On Sunday, January 22, 2017, 9:09:37 AM CET Ard Biesheuvel wrote:
> On 22 January 2017 at 08:58, Michael Zoran <mzoran at crowfest.net> wrote:
> > On Sun, 2017-01-22 at 09:52 +0100, Alexander Stein wrote:
> >> Hi Michael,
> >> 
> >> On Sunday, January 22, 2017, 12:07:04 AM CET Michael Zoran wrote:
> >> > I'm not sure if this if the correct place to be asking this.   The
> >> > RPI
> >> > 3 running ARM64 is slowly reaching the point of being about to
> >> > seriously run a 32 bit vender OS like Raspbian.  When running
> >> > Raspbian,
> >> > I'm seeing a very large number(thousands) of kernel log messages
> >> > about
> >> > deprecated instructions especially setend and barrier instuctions.
> >> > This can be very annoying and is completely filling the kernel log.
> >> > 
> >> > I'm considering submitting a patch to add a Kconfig option to
> >> > disable
> >> > these warnings with the default being to keep the warnings
> >> > enabled.  I
> >> > was wondering if such a patch could be seriously considered.
> >> 
> >> Could you please provide an example of those warning an what is
> >> trigging
> >> those?
> >> 
> >> Thanks and best regards,
> >> Alexander
> > 
> > Sure, here is a snipped from dmesg.  I think this is happening because
> > the entire Raspbian OS is compiled with a custom gcc compiler that is
> > targeting arm6+VFP.
> > 
> > I can double check, but I think the instructions are being emulated in
> > hardware so they are just filling the log and slowing things down.
> > 
> > [10685.558480] cp15barrier_handler: 197896 callbacks suppressed
> > [10685.558487] "Xorg" (656) uses deprecated CP15 Barrier instruction at
> > 0xf707fe9c
> > [10685.558504] "Xorg" (656) uses deprecated CP15 Barrier instruction at
> > 0xf7015944
> > [10685.558511] "Xorg" (656) uses deprecated CP15 Barrier instruction at
> > 0xf7012494
> > [10685.558518] "Xorg" (656) uses deprecated CP15 Barrier instruction at
> > 0xf70159b4
> > [10685.558527] "Xorg" (656) uses deprecated CP15 Barrier instruction at
> > 0xf7011478
> > [10685.558533] "Xorg" (656) uses deprecated CP15 Barrier instruction at
> > 0xf70114e8
> > [10685.558540] "Xorg" (656) uses deprecated CP15 Barrier instruction at
> > 0xf7015944
> > [10685.558547] "Xorg" (656) uses deprecated CP15 Barrier instruction at
> > 0xf7012494
> > [10685.558553] "Xorg" (656) uses deprecated CP15 Barrier instruction at
> > 0xf70159b4
> > [10685.558560] "Xorg" (656) uses deprecated CP15 Barrier instruction at
> > 0xf7011478
> > [10685.559179] compat_setend_handler: 1078 callbacks suppressed
> > [10685.559188] "systemd-journal" (138) uses deprecated setend
> > instruction at 0xf76a66f4
> > [10685.559196] "systemd-journal" (138) uses deprecated setend
> > instruction at 0xf76a6bd8
> > [10685.559209] "systemd-journal" (138) uses deprecated setend
> > instruction at 0xf76a66f4
> > [10685.559216] "systemd-journal" (138) uses deprecated setend
> > instruction at 0xf76a6bd8
> > [10685.559231] "systemd-journal" (138) uses deprecated setend
> > instruction at 0xf76a66f4
> > [10685.559237] "systemd-journal" (138) uses deprecated setend
> > instruction at 0xf76a6bd8
> > [10685.559246] "systemd-journal" (138) uses deprecated setend
> > instruction at 0xf76a66f4
> > [10685.559253] "systemd-journal" (138) uses deprecated setend
> > instruction at 0xf76a6bd8
> > [10685.559269] "systemd-journal" (138) uses deprecated setend
> > instruction at 0xf76a66f4
> > [10685.559276] "systemd-journal" (138) uses deprecated setend
> > instruction at 0xf76a6bd8
> 
> You can disable the emulation by doing
> 
> echo 2 >/proc/sys/abi/setend
> echo 2 >/proc/sys/abi/cp15_barrier

This reminds me of /proc/cpu/alignment to detect alignment problems in your 
application. Although armv6+ can handle unaligned access in most (!) cases you 
might want to trap thos cases. I would consider this a similar way.
IMHO raspbian, still supporting raspberry pi 1 (armv6), should silence those 
warnings.

Best regards,
Alexander