[PATCH] Fix data abort caused by mis-aligning fit data in

[Reuben Dowle]

I can see that arm64 requires 8 bytes. That is stated in section 2 of https://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/torvalds/linux.git/tree/Documentation/arm64/booting.rst.

I can't see a similar requirement for arm, although my search was not exhaustive. More generally I can see that all device trees must be at least 4 byte aligned (from section II.2 of https://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/torvalds/linux.git/tree/Documentation/devicetree/booting-without-of.rst)

So it does seem that 8 bytes would work for at least both of these. I would be happy with hard-coding that, as I doubt it would cause any problems with other architectures.

I don't have anything to add on the ability to relocate the device tree. In my case the device tree is for the next stage u-boot, so won't need relocating. This might become an issue if this was booting direct to linux from the SPL perhaps.

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Tom Rini <trini at konsulko.com>
> Sent: Tuesday, 25 August 2020 8:40 am
> To: Reuben Dowle <reuben.dowle at 4rf.com>
> Cc: u-boot at lists.denx.de
> Subject: Re: [PATCH] Fix data abort caused by mis-aligning fit data in
> 
> On Mon, Aug 24, 2020 at 08:05:24PM +0000, Reuben Dowle wrote:
> 
> > Should I submit a new patch with the alignment set to 8 bytes? I would
> think a hard coded 8 bytes would not be the best solution, since not all
> architectures will need that much alignment. I suspect some would work with
> any alignment, and most 32-bit archs would be fine with 4-byte alignment.
> >
> > Our released software is actually using a patch to align to 4096 bytes, but I
> knew that was unnecessarily large. I was not really sure what would be an
> appropriate value here, and took a guess at ARCH_DMA_MINALIGN when I
> cleaned it up for submitting upstream. Is there a better define to use?
> >
> > I am also interested to know where the 8 byte alignment requirement is
> documented.
> 
> So we're talking about the device tree file, and only that, in this part
> of the code, right?  In the Linux kernel documentation, both arm and
> arm64 document that the device tree must be on an 8-byte aligned
> address.  That is the bare minimum.  If we aren't further relocating it
> (as fdt_high is set to 0xffffffff for example, which in general is wrong
> and bad), that's still the best we can do.  It would be good to allow
> for further relocation down the line as we aren't making sure it
> wouldn't be overwritten by the kernel BSS, etc.
> 
> --
> Tom