• Ingo Molnar's avatar
    [PATCH] x86_64: fix boot time hang in detect_calgary() · 136f1e7a
    Ingo Molnar authored
    if CONFIG_CALGARY_IOMMU is built into the kernel via
    CONFIG_CALGARY_IOMMU_ENABLED_BY_DEFAULT, or is enabled via the
    iommu=calgary boot option, then the detect_calgary() function runs to
    detect the presence of a Calgary IOMMU.
    
    detect_calgary() first searches the BIOS EBDA area for a "rio_table_hdr"
    BIOS table. It has this parsing algorithm for the EBDA:
    
    	while (offset) {
    		...
    		/* The next offset is stored in the 1st word. 0 means no more */
     		offset = *((unsigned short *)(ptr + offset));
    	}
    
    got that? Lets repeat it slowly: we've got a BIOS-supplied data
    structure, plus Linux kernel code that will only break out of an
    infinite parsing loop once the BIOS gives a zero offset. Ok?
    
    Translation: what an excellent opportunity for BIOS writers to lock up
    the Linux boot process in an utterly hard to debug place! Indeed the
    BIOS jumped on that opportunity on my box, which has the following EBDA
    chaining layout:
    
      384, 65282, 65535, 65535, 65535, 65535, 65535, 65535 ...
    
    see the pattern? So my, definitely non-Calgary system happily locks up
    in detect_calgary()!
    
    the patch below fixes the boot hang by trusting the BIOS-supplied data
    structure a bit less: the parser always has to make forward progress,
    and if it doesnt, we break out of the loop and i get the expected kernel
    message:
    
      Calgary: Unable to locate Rio Grande Table in EBDA - bailing!
    Signed-off-by: default avatarIngo Molnar <mingo@elte.hu>
    Acked-by: default avatarMuli Ben-Yehuda <muli@il.ibm.com>
    Signed-off-by: default avatarLinus Torvalds <torvalds@osdl.org>
    136f1e7a
pci-calgary.c 30.3 KB