Re: [PATCH 5/5] Serial: UART driver changes for Cavium OCTEON.

[Shinya Kuribayashi <shinya.kuribayashi@necel.com>]

Hi David,

David Daney wrote:
> Cavium UART implementation won't work with the standard 8250 driver
> as-is.  Define a new uart_config (PORT_OCTEON) and use it to enable
> special handling required by the OCTEON's serial port.  Two new bug
> types are defined.

You just added one new bug type, not two. ;-)

> diff --git a/drivers/serial/8250.c b/drivers/serial/8250.c
> index 3bb8e30..63dbbb6 100644
> --- a/drivers/serial/8250.c
> +++ b/drivers/serial/8250.c
> @@ -279,6 +279,14 @@ static const struct serial8250_config uart_config[] = {
>  		.fcr		= UART_FCR_ENABLE_FIFO | UART_FCR_R_TRIG_10,
>  		.flags		= UART_CAP_FIFO,
>  	},
> +	[PORT_OCTEON] = {
> +		.name		= "OCTEON",
> +		.fifo_size	= 64,
> +		.tx_loadsz	= 64,
> +		.bugs		= UART_BUG_TIMEOUT,
> +		.fcr		= UART_FCR_ENABLE_FIFO | UART_FCR_R_TRIG_10,
> +		.flags		= UART_CAP_FIFO,
> +	},
>  };
>  
>  #if defined (CONFIG_SERIAL_8250_AU1X00)

I see your point.  Then let's look at this commit:

|commit 40b36daad0ac704e6d5c1b75789f371ef5b053c1
|Author: Alex Williamson <alex.williamson@hp.com>
|Date:   Wed Feb 14 00:33:04 2007 -0800
|
|    [PATCH] 8250 UART backup timer
|
|    The patch below works around a minor bug found in the UART of the remote
|    management card used in many HP ia64 and parisc servers (aka the Diva
|    UARTs).  The problem is that the UART does not reassert the THRE interrupt
|    if it has been previously cleared and the IIR THRI bit is re-enabled.  This
|    can produce a very annoying failure mode when used as a serial console,
|    allowing a boot/reboot to hang indefinitely until an RX interrupt kicks it
|    into working again (ie.  an unattended reboot could stall).
|
|    To solve this problem, a backup timer is introduced that runs alongside the
|    standard interrupt driven mechanism.  This timer wakes up periodically,
|    checks for a hang condition and gets characters moving again.  This backup
|    mechanism is only enabled if the UART is detected as having this problem,
|    so systems without these UARTs will have no additional overhead.
|
|    This version of the patch incorporates previous comments from Pavel and
|    removes races in the bug detection code.  The test is now done before the
|    irq linking to prevent races with interrupt handler clearing the THRE
|    interrupt.  Short delays and syncs are also added to ensure the device is
|    able to update register state before the result is tested.
|
|    Aristeu says:
|
|      this was tested on the following HP machines and solved the problem:
|      rx2600, rx2620, rx1600 and rx1620s.
|
|    hpa says:
|
|      I have seen this same bug in soft UART IP from "a major vendor."
|
|    Signed-off-by: Alex Williamson <alex.williamson@hp.com>
|    Cc: "H. Peter Anvin" <hpa@zytor.com>
|    Cc: Russell King <rmk@arm.linux.org.uk>
|    Acked-by: Aristeu Sergio Rozanski Filho <aris@cathedrallabs.org>
|    Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@linux-foundation.org>
|    Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>

AFAICS this patch tries to handle the same problem, and added reasonable
framework with serial8250_backup_timeout, etc.  And now we have UART_BUG
_THRE for this issue.  Then it might be better to use existing codes as
much as possible.

Just random thoughts,

- could we dynamically probe this bug in serial8250_startup as well?

- is there any possibility this hardware works with an existing
  serial8250_backup_timeout, not doing this below:

> @@ -1714,7 +1722,7 @@ static void serial8250_timeout(unsigned long data)
>  	unsigned int iir;
>  
>  	iir = serial_in(up, UART_IIR);
> -	if (!(iir & UART_IIR_NO_INT))
> +	if (!(iir & UART_IIR_NO_INT) || (up->bugs & UART_BUG_TIMEOUT))
>  		serial8250_handle_port(up);
>  	mod_timer(&up->timer, jiffies + poll_timeout(up->port.timeout));
>  }

I'm not an UART expert, any feedback is highly appreciated.

Thanks,

-- 
Shinya Kuribayashi
NEC Electronics