[OpenBIOS] [Qemu-ppc] Running client with MMU off

[Alexander Graf]

On 25.06.14 01:30, Alexander Graf wrote:
>
> On 25.06.14 01:21, BALATON Zoltan wrote:
>> On Sat, 21 Jun 2014, BALATON Zoltan wrote:
>>> On Fri, 20 Jun 2014, Mark Cave-Ayland wrote:
>>>> As for the code that generates the ISIs, is this in MorphOS as 
>>>> opposed to OpenBIOS? I guess something must have previously 
>>>> accessed an entry on the same page before the registers were 
>>>> updated, or maybe there is some kind of hardware readahead?
>>>
>>> The code is in the MorphOS boot loader and what it does is trying to 
>>> take over memory management. Unfortunately it seems there is a 
>>> period when it already replaced the vectors but have not set up the 
>>> TLB hash table yet so it cannot actually handle exceptions. I could 
>>> prevent DSIs but running the code during this period generates 
>>> ISI-s. If the code is run in the same order on real hardware then 
>>> it's not likely that the page is accessed there and not on QEMU. A 
>>> readahead could explain it but I don't know if that happens. I have 
>>> no better idea now than manually generating faults for all pages 
>>> where the client code is loaded before calling it. I'll try to 
>>> implement that unless someone can suggest a better solution.
>>
>> Experimenting with it some more I could not make it work that way 
>> probably because by the time the ISI happens the vectors are already 
>> replaced and the sr0 register is overwritten so even if I manage to 
>> put translations in our hash table for that code that won't be 
>> correct any more by the time the ISI that causes a crash is handled.
>>
>> So the only things that might work are using IBATs or disabling the 
>> MMU bits when MorphOS overwrites the vectors. I think this latter 
>> option is a bit cleaner but how can I get an interrupt when a memory 
>> address is written to? (Apart from setting up a watch point for it.) 
>> In the OpenBIOS code there are comments stating that page 0 is not 
>> mapped to catch NULL pointer dereferences but this does not seem to 
>> work as MorphOS can write over page 0 and only get an exception when 
>> reaching the next page. (Also I've found documented in one version of 
>> the PPC programming environments document that 0x00-0xff is reserved 
>> for operating system use so they can legally write there.) I'm sure 
>> I'm missing something here again.
>>
>> It could possibly work on real hardware because of caches and that's 
>> where the read ahead might happen during the critical part. This is 
>> what seems to happen during MorphOS's MMU take over as far as I 
>> understand:
>>
>> 1. memcpy to 0, len=0x2000
>> 2. fixup jumps and write base address to 0x80 (this is what's zeroed at
>>    the earlier write at the beginning)
>> 3. Set MSR_BE and tweak HID0 (this may cause code to be preloaded in
>>    cache?)
>> 4. Set sr0-15 from stack variables
>> 5. Values for IBAT and DBAT registers are loaded from the stack and SDR1
>>    is set to 0 dropping the hash table
>> 6. MSR_DR and MSR_IR are cleared
>> 7. BAT registers are set up as shown in this message:
>> http://www.openfirmware.info/pipermail/openbios/2014-June/008419.html
>>    which means that the stack should be within the first 256MB
>> 8. TLB entries are invalidated then MMU bits are re-enabled (but
>>    hashed page tables are not there yet so it relies on BATs at this 
>> point)
>> 9. After doing some other stuff eventually a function is called that 
>> sets
>>    up the hash table
>> 10. Vectors are replaced again later during boot after the 
>> microkernel has
>>     started its servers
>
> Shouldn't the above sequence work fine if it's executed with MSR_IR=0 
> MSR_DR=0 from the beginning?

Or if you want to keep using virtual paging, just add iBAT and dBAT 
entries for the first 256MB when you see MorphOS? Maybe it assumes that 
it gets booted with firmware bolting itself via BATs, not the HTAB.


Alex