Revision as of 15:02, 1 June 2015

Known Issues with the PA-RISC Linux Kernel

This page lists known limitations of the current implementation of the PA-RISC Linux kernel. If not mentioned otherwise, this list applies to the latest GIT version (at the time of this writing this means version 2.6.22-rc2). Please note that this list is likely to be incomplete and is NOT meant to be a TODO or "wanted features" page! BTW, if you think you have found a bug not listed here then please report it to the PA-RISC Linux mailing list.

Some of the issues described here might never be resolved, partly due to the fact that documentation is unavailable/missing, it would not fit with the current kernel design or there is simply lack of manpower.

Also keep an eye on the hotspots and the available TestCases

Missing/Incomplete PA-RISC specific Drivers

VisualizeFX graphics cards
- No graphics support written, cards can only be used in text mode via the sticon driver. There is interest in a driver being written, but because no programming documentation has been released by HP this will be a difficult task. There is a reverse engineering attempt on VisualizeFX.
Accelerated X11 support for Visualize-EG graphics cards
- So far there is only basic framebuffer support via stifb. Lack of manuals/time. Anyway, an acceleration support for NGLE cards is in progress.
Full HP-UX support
- Right now only a very poor level of compatibility is provided. Actually it is possible that even this will be removed in the future; support for executing HP-UX binaries is difficult to do, and some things like HP-UX style threads will never work on linux.
- Note: HP-UX compatibility was dropped with kernel 3.14 since we defined EWOULDBLOCK == EAGAIN to better support Linux userspace apps.
HP-PB bus and HP-PB cards
- This bus system and type of cards are mainly used on old HP9000/800 servers. Much of the programming manuals are not available, and since there is not much demand to support such old machines progress for these devices is almost non-existent (although some brave souls have been seen hacking on them from time to time)
ccio and ncr53c8xx (ncr53c720) - apparently not 64 bit clean
ns87415 - DMA support doesn't seem to work (transfer speeds <=3MB/s)
snd_ad1889 - playing music with alsa native interface produces garbled sound, OSS emu does work however. This is because alsa native use mmap on the device, which parisc-linux doesn't support (yet).
EISA DMA support is not implemented yet

LBA version TR4.0 (0x5) found at 0xfffffffffed3c000 allocation failed: out of vmalloc space - use vmalloc=<size> to increase size.
PCI-to-PCI bridge issue (loop in `/proc/iomem` `/proc/ioports`)
Builtin Tulip failing autoneg
The "Ctrl-C" bug

Broken Device Drivers and File Systems

Hardware drivers, networking support, file systems etc. that are expected to work on all supported architectures of the Linux kernel, but don't function properly on PA-RISC Linux:

matroxfb - 64 bit kernel issue: screen stays black, i.e. graphics card is not properly initialized <-- HAS THIS BEEN FIXED?
Promise IDE P-ATA controller (PDC202XX_NEW) - DMA issues, but booting with 'nodma' works. Try a siimage controller if you really need IDE.

PTE/TLB issues

Quoting [James David Anglin]:

1) minifail bug

As previously identified, there is a cache flush problem in ptep_set_wrprotect. I did a kernel build with a "`WARN_ON(pte_present(old_pte) && pte_dirty(old_pte)`" in `ptep_set_wrprotect` an it triggered immediately. So, we have to deal with a dirty cache in `ptep_set_wrprotect`. As far as I can tell, this problem is fixed by putting the flush inside `preempt_disable()/preempt_enable()`.

Helge is triggering other PTE issues when he runs multiple copies of minifail. The minifail program fails on a UP system. With the above fix, it doesn't fail.

2) SMP page table entry corruption

The needs to be a lock around pte updates to ensure that pte modifications are consistent on SMP machines. I have done this and it helps stability on rp3440.

3) SMP PTE/TLB consistency

We are not purging existing translations when an update to a PTE value is done such as in `ptep_set_wrprotect`. As a result, the parent of a fork doesn't immediately trigger a COW break on a page when a write occurs if there is an existing translation.

Adding a TLB purge helps, but even this may be lost. For example,

page fault (cpu1)
 -> load old pte (cpu1)
   -> store new pte (cpu2)
     -> global tlb purge (cpu2)
       -> insert old pte into tlb (cpu1)

It may be possible to use locking to ensure that purges aren't lost. However, this is a bit tricky...

Other Missing Features (related to palo, glibc, userspace etc.)

PA-hackers, please check whether the following list is up to date

Other items that do not fit into the other sections ...

64 bit userland, missing bits:
- 64 bit binutils that will build DSO's
- 64 bit glibc
- Multiple stub sections for the 64 bit linker.
Low latency
XFree86/X.org BIOS init emulation support
CPU hotplug
HugeTLB page support
MSI/MSI-X PCI device support

@@ Line 6: / Line 6: @@
 Some of the issues described here might never be resolved, partly due to the fact that documentation is unavailable/missing, it would not fit with the current kernel design or there is simply lack of manpower.
-Also keep an eye on the [[hotspots]] and the available TestCases
+Also keep an eye on the [[hotspots]] and the available [[TestCases]]
 == Missing/Incomplete PA-RISC specific Drivers ==
-  * VisualizeFX graphics cards
+* VisualizeFX graphics cards
-    No graphics support written, cards can only be used in text mode via the sticon driver. There is interest in a driver being written, but because no programming documentation has been released by HP this will be a difficult task.
+** No graphics support written, cards can only be used in text mode via the sticon driver. There is interest in a driver being written, but because no programming documentation has been released by HP this will be a difficult task. There is a reverse engineering attempt on [[VisualizeFX]].
-  * Accelerated X11 support for Visualize-EG graphics cards
+* Accelerated X11 support for Visualize-EG graphics cards
-    So far there is only basic framebuffer support via stifb. Lack of manuals/time.
+** So far there is only basic framebuffer support via stifb. Lack of [[DocumentationWishList|manuals]]/time. Anyway, an acceleration support for [[NGLE]] cards is in progress.
-  * Full HP-UX support
+* Full HP-UX support
-    Right now only a very poor level of compatibility is provided. Actually it is possible that even this will be removed in the future; support for executing HP-UX binaries is difficult to do, and some things like HP-UX style threads will never work on linux.
+** Right now only a very poor level of compatibility is provided. Actually it is possible that even this will be removed in the future; support for executing HP-UX binaries is difficult to do, and some things like HP-UX style threads will never work on linux.
-  * HP-PB bus and HP-PB cards
+** Note: HP-UX compatibility was dropped with kernel 3.14 since we defined EWOULDBLOCK == EAGAIN to better support Linux userspace apps.
-    This bus system and type of cards are mainly used on old HP9000/800 servers. Much of the programming manuals are not available, and since there is not much demand to support such old machines progress for these devices is almost non-existent (although some brave souls have been seen hacking on them from time to time)
+* HP-PB bus and HP-PB cards
-  * PA-8800 and PA-8900 support - the current kernel is quite unstable on these machines. The problem appears to have to do with cache management.
+** This bus system and type of cards are mainly used on old HP9000/800 servers. Much of the programming manuals are not available, and since there is not much demand to support such old machines progress for these devices is almost non-existent (although some brave souls have been seen hacking on them from time to time)
-  * ccio and ncr53c8xx (ncr53c720) - apparently not 64 bit clean
+* ccio and ncr53c8xx (ncr53c720) - apparently not 64 bit clean
-  * ns87415 - DMA support doesn't seem to work (transfer speeds <=3MB/s)
+* ns87415 - DMA support doesn't seem to work (transfer speeds <=3MB/s)
-  * snd_ad1889 - playing music with alsa native interface produces garbled sound, OSS emu does work however. This is because alsa native use mmap on the device, which parisc-linux doesn't support (yet).
+* snd_ad1889 - playing music with alsa native interface produces garbled sound, OSS emu does work however. This is because alsa native use mmap on the device, which parisc-linux doesn't support (yet).
-  * EISA DMA support is not implemented yet
+* EISA DMA support is not implemented yet
- * {{{LBA version TR4.0 (0x5) found at 0xfffffffffed3c000
+* LBA version TR4.0 (0x5) found at 0xfffffffffed3c000 allocation failed: out of vmalloc space - use vmalloc=<size> to increase size.
-allocation failed: out of vmalloc space - use vmalloc=<size> to increase size.}}}
+* PCI-to-PCI bridge issue (loop in `/proc/iomem` `/proc/ioports`)
- * PCI-to-PCI bridge issue (loop in `/proc/iomem` `/proc/ioports`)
+* Builtin Tulip failing autoneg
- * Builtin Tulip failing autoneg
+* The "Ctrl-C" bug
- * Figure out why PA-8800 userspace is broken.
- * {{{Freeing unused kernel memory: BUG: warning at arch/parisc/kernel/smp.c:348/smp_call_function()}}}
- * On pa8800: {{{parisc_cache_init: Only equivalent aliasing supported!}}}
- * The "Ctrl-C" bug
 == Broken Device Drivers and File Systems ==
@@ Line 37: / Line 33: @@
 Hardware drivers, networking support, file systems etc. that are expected to work on all supported architectures of the Linux kernel, but don't function properly on PA-RISC Linux:
-  * matroxfb - 64 bit kernel issue: screen stays black, i.e. graphics card is not properly initialized  <-- HAS THIS BEEN FIXED?
+* matroxfb - 64 bit kernel issue: screen stays black, i.e. graphics card is not properly initialized  <-- HAS THIS BEEN FIXED?
-  * Promise IDE P-ATA controller (PDC202XX_NEW) - DMA issues, but booting with 'nodma' works. Try a siimage controller if you really need IDE.
+* Promise IDE P-ATA controller (PDC202XX_NEW) - DMA issues, but booting with 'nodma' works. Try a siimage controller if you really need IDE.
-  * --(XFS seems to be broken (heavy filesystem corruption))-- Fixed by James Bottomley with this [[http://article.gmane.org/gmane.linux.kernel.cross-arch/4364|patchset]]
 == PTE/TLB issues ==
-Quoting [[http://article.gmane.org/gmane.linux.ports.parisc/2814|James David Anglin]]:
+Quoting [[http://article.gmane.org/gmane.linux.ports.parisc/2814 James David Anglin]]:
 ) minifail bug
@@ Line 73: / Line 66: @@
 Adding a TLB purge helps, but even this may be lost.  For example,
-{{{
+ <nowiki>
 page fault (cpu1)
   -> load old pte (cpu1)
@@ Line 79: / Line 72: @@
       -> global tlb purge (cpu2)
         -> insert old pte into tlb (cpu1)
-}}}
+ </nowiki>
 It may be possible to use locking to ensure that purges aren't lost.  However,
 this is a bit tricky...
-== SMP perf / cache issue ==
-We must keep track of these:
-http://lists.parisc-linux.org/pipermail/parisc-linux/2005-October/027547.html
-{{{
-<kyle> there's no doubt we flush too much.
-<jejb> There was a 50% speed up in the UP case when I removed the excess flushing ... that's in the archives too
-}}}
-http://linux-voyager.bkbits.net:8080/parisc-noflush-2.6/?PAGE=patch&REV=1.1371.687.11
-{{{
-<ggg> willy: chada thinks we are missing an i-cache flush someplace...aliasing rules might clear the d-cache but not clear the i-cache on pa8800.
-}}}
 == Other Missing Features (related to palo, glibc, userspace etc.) ==
 '''''PA-hackers, please check whether the following list is up to date'''''
@@ Line 106: / Line 83: @@
 Other items that do not fit into the other sections ...
-  * signal handling bug - in some cases signals appears to be dropped silently, or delivered to the wrong process.
+* 64 bit userland, missing bits:
-  * interrupt delivery bug?
+** 64 bit binutils that will build DSO's
-  * interrupt affinity bug (maybe both are related), see [[http://article.gmane.org/gmane.linux.ports.parisc/2808|this thread]]
+** 64 bit glibc
-  * 64 bit userland
+** Multiple stub sections for the 64 bit linker.
-    missing bits:
+* Low latency
-    * 64 bit binutils that will build DSO's
+* XFree86/X.org BIOS init emulation support
-    * 64 bit glibc
+* CPU hotplug
-    * Multiple stub sections for the 64 bit linker.
+* HugeTLB page support
-  * Low latency
+* MSI/MSI-X PCI device support
-  * Preempt
-  * XFree86/X.org BIOS init emulation support
-  * CPU hotplug
-  * HugeTLB page support
-  * MSI/MSI-X PCI device support

KnownIssues

Revision as of 15:02, 1 June 2015

Contents

Known Issues with the PA-RISC Linux Kernel

Missing/Incomplete PA-RISC specific Drivers

Broken Device Drivers and File Systems

PTE/TLB issues

Other Missing Features (related to palo, glibc, userspace etc.)

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