[RFC v2 1/1] RTL8712 alignment bug in 3.6 and up on ARMV5

[RFC v2 1/1] RTL8712 alignment bug in 3.6 and up on ARMV5

[Josh Coombs]

I've been banging on my test setup for the past week.  I haven't
tracked down the cause yet, but something in my prior build system
results in this problem being masked with some builds.  Doing pure
vanilla builds from git I'm able to reproduce with 3.6 and the 3.7-rc
series reliably.  Support for my GFN doesn't exist officially prior to
3.6 and I didn't want to introduce new variables by back porting
support and trying to test with that patch set so I was unable to
isolate a start point for the failure I found.  I can reproduce the
failure with 3.7-rc6 currently.

Currently I'm running stable on 3.7-rc6 with the below patch and my
RealTek 8712 USB NIC.

I'm open to any and all suggestions on how to test further.

Signed-off-by: Joshua Coombs <josh.coombs@gmail.com>
--
diff -ruN a/drivers/staging/rtl8712/rtl871x_sta_mgt.c
b/drivers/staging/rtl8712/rtl871x_sta_mgt.c
--- a/drivers/staging/rtl8712/rtl871x_sta_mgt.c 2012-11-17
16:21:23.000000000 -0500
+++ b/drivers/staging/rtl8712/rtl871x_sta_mgt.c 2012-11-18
14:58:27.000000000 -0500
@@ -52,11 +52,11 @@
  s32 i;

  pstapriv->pallocated_stainfo_buf = _malloc(sizeof(struct sta_info) *
-   NUM_STA + 4);
+   NUM_STA + 8);
  if (pstapriv->pallocated_stainfo_buf == NULL)
  return _FAIL;
- pstapriv->pstainfo_buf = pstapriv->pallocated_stainfo_buf + 4 -
- ((addr_t)(pstapriv->pallocated_stainfo_buf) & 3);
+ pstapriv->pstainfo_buf = pstapriv->pallocated_stainfo_buf + 8 -
+ ((addr_t)(pstapriv->pallocated_stainfo_buf) & 7);
  _init_queue(&pstapriv->free_sta_queue);
  spin_lock_init(&pstapriv->sta_hash_lock);
  pstapriv->asoc_sta_count = 0;

[RFC v2 1/1] RTL8712 alignment bug in 3.6 and up on ARMV5

[Josh Coombs]

Given 3.7 has shipped, should I rebase on release and put a new RFC
post up, rebase on linux-next, wait for a 3.8-rc or just post it up as
v2 for submission this time as is?

Josh C

On Mon, Nov 26, 2012 at 4:38 PM, Josh Coombs <josh.coombs@gmail.com> wrote:
> I've been banging on my test setup for the past week.  I haven't
> tracked down the cause yet, but something in my prior build system
> results in this problem being masked with some builds.  Doing pure
> vanilla builds from git I'm able to reproduce with 3.6 and the 3.7-rc
> series reliably.  Support for my GFN doesn't exist officially prior to
> 3.6 and I didn't want to introduce new variables by back porting
> support and trying to test with that patch set so I was unable to
> isolate a start point for the failure I found.  I can reproduce the
> failure with 3.7-rc6 currently.
>
> Currently I'm running stable on 3.7-rc6 with the below patch and my
> RealTek 8712 USB NIC.
>
> I'm open to any and all suggestions on how to test further.
>
> Signed-off-by: Joshua Coombs <josh.coombs@gmail.com>
> --
> diff -ruN a/drivers/staging/rtl8712/rtl871x_sta_mgt.c
> b/drivers/staging/rtl8712/rtl871x_sta_mgt.c
> --- a/drivers/staging/rtl8712/rtl871x_sta_mgt.c 2012-11-17
> 16:21:23.000000000 -0500
> +++ b/drivers/staging/rtl8712/rtl871x_sta_mgt.c 2012-11-18
> 14:58:27.000000000 -0500
> @@ -52,11 +52,11 @@
>   s32 i;
>
>   pstapriv->pallocated_stainfo_buf = _malloc(sizeof(struct sta_info) *
> -   NUM_STA + 4);
> +   NUM_STA + 8);
>   if (pstapriv->pallocated_stainfo_buf == NULL)
>   return _FAIL;
> - pstapriv->pstainfo_buf = pstapriv->pallocated_stainfo_buf + 4 -
> - ((addr_t)(pstapriv->pallocated_stainfo_buf) & 3);
> + pstapriv->pstainfo_buf = pstapriv->pallocated_stainfo_buf + 8 -
> + ((addr_t)(pstapriv->pallocated_stainfo_buf) & 7);
>   _init_queue(&pstapriv->free_sta_queue);
>   spin_lock_init(&pstapriv->sta_hash_lock);
>   pstapriv->asoc_sta_count = 0;

[RFC v2 1/1] RTL8712 alignment bug in 3.6 and up on ARMV5

[Dan Carpenter]

Thanks for fixing this bug.  Your patch works but it's not the right
way to do it.

The original code here adds 4 to pointers which are currently
aligned instead of leaving them as is.  We have a kernel ALIGN()
macro which works correctly, but actually, it's not needed.

On arm, the pointer returned from kmalloc() is already aligned at
the 8 byte boundary because "#define ARCH_SLAB_MINALIGN 8".  The
original code always adds 4 to the pointer so everything is
misaligned.

Your patch adds another 4 bytes so it is now aligned at the 8 byte
boundary again.  That works, of course, but it's better to remove
the whole mess.

	pstapriv->pallocated_stainfo_buf = kmalloc(sizeof(struct sta_info) * NUM_STA);

Get rid of the ->pstainfo_buf pointer which is only used to store
the "aligned" version of ->pallocated_stainfo_buf.

Please send a version which applies with "git am" and has the proper
sign-off.  Sent it to yourself first.  Save the raw email (including
headers and everything).
	cat raw_email.txt | git am
Type "git log -p" to verify that the commit message looks good.
Then resend it to the list.

Thanks again.  This is a good bugfix.

regards,
dan carpenter