linux-kernel - Re: Serial related oops

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Date:	Mon, 19 Feb 2007 17:54:52 +0000
From:	Jose Goncalves <jose.goncalves@...v.pt>
To:	Frederik Deweerdt <deweerdt@...e.fr>, akpm@...ux-foundation.org,
	linux-kernel@...r.kernel.org
Subject: Re: Serial related oops

Russell King wrote:
> On Mon, Feb 19, 2007 at 04:29:39PM +0000, Jose Goncalves wrote:
>   
>> Russell King wrote:
>>     
>>> On Tue, Feb 20, 2007 at 02:48:14PM +0000, Frederik Deweerdt wrote:
>>>   
>>>       
>>>> (trimmed tie-fei.zang from the CC, added by mistake)
>>>> On Mon, Feb 19, 2007 at 02:35:20PM +0000, Russell King wrote:
>>>>     
>>>>         
>>>>>> Neither did I, but introducing printk's through the function, we narrowed
>>>>>> the problem to this part of the code. And removing it makes the problem
>>>>>> go away. We inserted 37 printk's in the function body, and Jose bisected
>>>>>> those until the problem went away.
>>>>>>         
>>>>>>             
>>>>> Well, there's still little clue about why this is causing a NULL pointer
>>>>> dereference.  The only thing I can think is that somehow performing
>>>>> this test is causing a power glitch to your CPU, causing its registers
>>>>> to get corrupted, and which results in it doing a NULL pointer deref.
>>>>>       
>>>>>           
>>>> That may be the case, indeed.
>>>>     
>>>>         
>> But if the problem was a power glitch I should get Oops with or without
>> printk() inserted, shouldn't I?
>>     
>
> That depends if the printk() changes the timing such that it doesn't occur.
> Don't know, I'm only grasping at straws due to the lack of any concrete
> information.
>
>   
>>>> If you see other tests to be performed...
>>>>         
>>> Maybe adding some delays in that bit of code?  I'm sure you've already
>>> thought of that though.  Since no one has a proper understanding of the
>>> problem, the only suggestions possible are mere shots in the dark.
>>>       
>> I'm no kernel expert, but it's not possible to trace what is the
>> instruction that is causing the NULL pointer dereference?
>>     
>
> The reported dump shows that the kernel tried to access virtual address 0,
> and the instruction pointer seems to be the cause of that - it has a value
> of zero in that dump.
>
> The call trace indicates that the last function was called from around
> "uart_startup+0x63/0xf4" which is probably the indirect function call
> to serial8250_startup().  That's unconfirmed - the only way to get it
> confirmed is if you could dump the entire uart_startup() function.
>
> $ grep uart_startup System.map
> (address) T uart_startup
> $ objdump -r -d vmlinux --start-addr=0x<address> --stop-addr=0x<address+256>
>
> The grep should get you the address of uart_startup.  Replace <address>
> with that value and <address+256> with the value plus 256 (0x100) and
> mail the result.
>   

Result is attached.

José Gonçalves


View attachment "objdump.log" of type "text/x-log" (5220 bytes)