From dbb3b1ca5609d1f3848cd387d06cc60aaacf7f98 Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001 From: Al Cooper Date: Mon, 25 Jul 2011 16:19:52 -0400 Subject: [PATCH] 8250: Fix race condition in serial8250_backup_timeout(). This is to fix an issue where output will suddenly become very slow. The problem occurs on 8250 UARTS with the hardware bug UART_BUG_THRE. BACKGROUND For normal UARTs (without UART_BUG_THRE): When the serial core layer gets new transmit data and the transmitter is idle, it buffers the data and calls the 8250s' serial8250_start_tx() routine which will simply enable the TX interrupt in the IER register and return. This should immediately fire a THRE interrupt and begin transmitting the data. For buggy UARTs (with UART_BUG_THRE): merely enabling the TX interrupt in IER does not necessarily generate a new THRE interrupt. Therefore, a background timer periodically checks to see if there is pending data, and starts transmission if that is the case. The bug happens on SMP systems when the system has nothing to transmit, the transmit interrupt is disabled and the following sequence occurs: - CPU0: The background timer routine serial8250_backup_timeout() starts and saves the state of the interrupt enable register (IER) and then disables all interrupts in IER. NOTE: The transmit interrupt (TI) bit is saved as disabled. - CPU1: The serial core gets data to transmit, grabs the port lock and calls serial8250_start_tx() which enables the TI in IER. - CPU0: serial8250_backup_timeout() waits for the port lock. - CPU1: finishes (with TI enabled) and releases the port lock. - CPU0: serial8250_backup_timeout() calls the interrupt routine which will transmit the next fifo's worth of data and then restores the IER from the previously saved value (TI disabled). At this point, as long as the serial core has more transmit data buffered, it will not call serial8250_start_tx() again and the background timer routine will slowly transmit the data. The fix is to have serial8250_start_tx() get the port lock before it saves the IER state and release it after restoring IER. This will prevent serial8250_start_tx() from running in parallel. Signed-off-by: Al Cooper Cc: stable Signed-off-by: Greg Kroah-Hartman --- drivers/tty/serial/8250.c | 8 +++++--- 1 file changed, 5 insertions(+), 3 deletions(-) diff --git a/drivers/tty/serial/8250.c b/drivers/tty/serial/8250.c index f2dfec82faf8..7f50999eebc2 100644 --- a/drivers/tty/serial/8250.c +++ b/drivers/tty/serial/8250.c @@ -1819,6 +1819,8 @@ static void serial8250_backup_timeout(unsigned long data) unsigned int iir, ier = 0, lsr; unsigned long flags; + spin_lock_irqsave(&up->port.lock, flags); + /* * Must disable interrupts or else we risk racing with the interrupt * based handler. @@ -1836,10 +1838,8 @@ static void serial8250_backup_timeout(unsigned long data) * the "Diva" UART used on the management processor on many HP * ia64 and parisc boxes. */ - spin_lock_irqsave(&up->port.lock, flags); lsr = serial_in(up, UART_LSR); up->lsr_saved_flags |= lsr & LSR_SAVE_FLAGS; - spin_unlock_irqrestore(&up->port.lock, flags); if ((iir & UART_IIR_NO_INT) && (up->ier & UART_IER_THRI) && (!uart_circ_empty(&up->port.state->xmit) || up->port.x_char) && (lsr & UART_LSR_THRE)) { @@ -1848,11 +1848,13 @@ static void serial8250_backup_timeout(unsigned long data) } if (!(iir & UART_IIR_NO_INT)) - serial8250_handle_port(up); + transmit_chars(up); if (is_real_interrupt(up->port.irq)) serial_out(up, UART_IER, ier); + spin_unlock_irqrestore(&up->port.lock, flags); + /* Standard timer interval plus 0.2s to keep the port running */ mod_timer(&up->timer, jiffies + uart_poll_timeout(&up->port) + HZ / 5); -- GitLab