Re: [PATCH] serial: serial_msm: Ensure BAM/single character mode are disabled

Stephan Gerhold
2021-06-28T18:59:48Z

On Mon, Jun 28, 2021 at 08:15:28PM +0300, Ramon Fried wrote:
> On Mon, Jun 28, 2021 at 11:40 AM Stephan Gerhold <stephan@gerhold.net> wrote:
> >
> > At the moment, the U-Boot serial_msm driver does not initialize the
> > UART_DM_DMEN register with the required value. Usually this does not
> > cause any problems, because there is Qualcomm's LK bootloader running
> > before U-Boot which initializes the register with the correct value.
> >
> > It's important that this register is initialized correctly, because
> > the U-Boot driver does not make use of the BAM/DMA or single character
> > mode functionality of the UART controller. A different bootloader
> > before U-Boot might initialize the register differently.
> >
> > For example, on DragonBoard 410c U-Boot can also be installed to the
> > "aboot" partition (replacing LK entirely). In this case U-Boot is
> > loaded directly by SBL, which seems to use the single-character mode
> > for some reason. In single character mode there is always just one
> > char in the FIFO, instead of the 4 characters expected by
> > msm_serial_fetch(). It also causes issues with "earlycon" later in
> > the Linux kernel, which tries to output 4 chars at once,
> > but only the first char will be written.
> >
> > This causes early UART log in Linux to be corrupted like this:
> >
> > [ 00ano:ameoi .Q1B[ 00ac _idaM00080oo'ahani-lcle._20). 15NdNii 5 SPMSJ20:U2
> > [ 00rkoolmsamel
> > [ 00Fw ]elamletopsioble
> > [ 00ore
> >
> > instead of
> >
> > [ 0.000000] Booting Linux on physical CPU 0x0000000000 [0x410fd030]
> > [ 0.000000] Machine model: Qualcomm Technologies, Inc. APQ 8016 SBC
> > [ 0.000000] earlycon: msm_serial_dm0 at MMIO 0x00000000078b0000 (options '')
> > [ 0.000000] printk: bootconsole [msm_serial_dm0] enabled
> >
> > Make sure to initialize UART_DM_DMEN correctly to fix this issue
> > when loading U-Boot directly after SBL (instead of through LK).
> >
> > There is no functional difference when loading U-Boot through LK
> > since LK also initializes UART_DM_DMEN to 0x0. [1]
> >
> > [1]: https://git.linaro.org/landing-teams/working/qualcomm/lk.git/tree/platform/msm_shared/uart_dm.c?h=dragonboard410c-LA.BR.1.2.7-03810-8x16.0-linaro3#n203
> >
> > Cc: Ramon Fried <rfried.dev@gmail.com>
> > Signed-off-by: Stephan Gerhold <stephan@gerhold.net>
> > ---
> >
> > drivers/serial/serial_msm.c | 4 ++++
> > 1 file changed, 4 insertions(+)
> >
> > diff --git a/drivers/serial/serial_msm.c b/drivers/serial/serial_msm.c
> > index d8c6c2f6b5..d8dd5c1104 100644
> > --- a/drivers/serial/serial_msm.c
> > +++ b/drivers/serial/serial_msm.c
> > @@ -23,6 +23,7 @@
> > /* Serial registers - this driver works in uartdm mode*/
> >
> > #define UARTDM_DMRX 0x34 /* Max RX transfer length */
> > +#define UARTDM_DMEN 0x3C /* DMA/data-packing mode */
> > #define UARTDM_NCF_TX 0x40 /* Number of chars to TX */
> >
> > #define UARTDM_RXFS 0x50 /* RX channel status register */
> > @@ -197,6 +198,9 @@ static void uart_dm_init(struct msm_serial_data *priv)
> > writel(MSM_BOOT_UART_DM_8_N_1_MODE, priv->base + UARTDM_MR2);
> > writel(MSM_BOOT_UART_DM_CMD_RESET_RX, priv->base + UARTDM_CR);
> > writel(MSM_BOOT_UART_DM_CMD_RESET_TX, priv->base + UARTDM_CR);
> > +
> > + /* Make sure BAM/single character mode is disabled */
> > + writel(0x0, priv->base + UARTDM_DMEN);
> > }
> > static int msm_serial_probe(struct udevice *dev)
> > {
> > --
> > 2.32.0
> >
> Hi.
> This is strange, I never encountered the behaviour, and I did boot
> Linux after U-boot without LK in the way.

It happens for me if the boot flow is SBL -> U-Boot -> Linux instead of
SBL -> LK -> U-Boot -> Linux (The latter is the suggested setup
according to dragonboard410c_defconfig and the dragonboard410c
readme.txt, but I wanted to eliminate LK entirely).

If you tried the same, perhaps you didn't have earlycon enabled?
It also happens only during early boot with earlycon enabled
("earlycon" in kernel parameters). It stops happening later on boot
when the kernel fully re-initializes the UART controller. (The idea of
earlycon is to reuse the existing UART configuration to report errors
that occur very early during boot.)

Thanks,
Stephan