Re: [PATCH 00/71] More fixes, cleanup and modernization for NCR5380 drivers

[Ondrej Zary <linux@rainbow-software.org>]

On Tuesday 24 November 2015, Finn Thain wrote:
> 
> On Tue, 24 Nov 2015, Ondrej Zary wrote:
> 
> > On Tuesday 24 November 2015, Finn Thain wrote:
> > > 
> > > On Mon, 23 Nov 2015, Ondrej Zary wrote:
> > > 
> > > > 
> > > > PDMA seems to be broken in multiple ways. NCR5380_pread cannot 
> > > > process less than 128 bytes. In fact, 53C400 datasheet says that 
> > > > it's HW limitation: non-modulo-128-byte transfers should use PIO.
> > > > 
> > > > Adding
> > > >         transfersize = round_down(transfersize, 128);
> > > > to generic_NCR5380_dma_xfer_len() improves the situation a bit.
> > > > 
> > > > After modprobe, some small reads (8, 4, 24 and 64 bytes) are done 
> > > > using PIO, then eight 512-byte reads using PDMA and then it fails on 
> > > > a 254-byte read. First 128 bytes are read using PDMA and the next 
> > > > PDMA operation hangs waiting forever for the host buffer to be 
> > > > ready.
> > > > 
> > > 
> > > A 128-byte PDMA receive followed by 126-byte PDMA receive? I don't see 
> > > how that is possible given round_down(126, 128) == 0. Was this the 
> > > actual 'len' argument to NCR5380_pread() in g_NCR5380.c?
> > 
> > No 126-byte PDMA. The 126 bytes were probably lost (or mixed with the 
> > next read?).
> 
> When you said, the "PDMA operation hangs waiting forever", I figured that 
> you had hit an infinite loop in NCR5380_pread()... but now I'm lost.

The first 128-byte PDMA ended successfully (ignoring what happened to the
remaining 126 bytes), then a next request for 254 bytes came. This resulted
in a new 128-byte PDMA and that hanged (in one of its possibly infinite loops
without a timeout).

> My main concern here is to confirm that I didn't break anything e.g. with 
> patch 24 or 41. It would be nice to know that this hang is not the result 
> of a new bug.

PDMA was already broken before so it's hard to tell. I can try to modify
the unpatched driver to see if PDMA is broken the same way.

> > The next read was also 254 bytes so another 128-byte PDMA transfer.
> > 
> > Then modified NCR5380_information_transfer() to transfer the remaining 
> > data (126 bytes in this case) using PIO. It did not help, the next PDMA 
> > transfer failed too.
> > 
> 
> AFAICT, no change to NCR5380_information_transfer() should be needed. It 
> was always meant to cope with the need to split a transfer between (P)DMA 
> and PIO.
> 
> If the target is expecting the remaining 126 bytes, it will keep the bus 
> in DATA OUT phase, and the next iteration of the loop
> 	while ((cmd = hostdata->connected)) { }
> will call NCR5380_transfer_pio() for the remaining bytes. If the target 
> never asserts REQ, that transfer will never happen, but then the command 
> should timeout and get aborted, to handle the possibility that a "PDMA 
> operation hangs waiting forever".

Thanks for explanation.

> A protocol analyzer would be useful to debug this. I get a lot of value 
> from a bus terminator block that has LEDs for the various control signals.
> Failing that, you might need to place,
> #define NDEBUG (NDEBUG_INFORMATION | NDEBUG_HANDSHAKE | NDEBUG_PIO | NDEBUG_DMA | NDEBUG_MAIN)
> at the top of g_NCR5380.c.


-- 
Ondrej Zary