linux-kernel - Re: [PATCH v4 2/5] block: add partition parser for U-Boot uImage.FIT

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Date:   Thu, 10 Nov 2022 01:52:43 +0000
From:   Daniel Golle <daniel@...rotopia.org>
To:     Matthew Wilcox <willy@...radead.org>
Cc:     Jens Axboe <axboe@...nel.dk>,
        Miquel Raynal <miquel.raynal@...tlin.com>,
        Richard Weinberger <richard@....at>,
        Vignesh Raghavendra <vigneshr@...com>,
        Davidlohr Bueso <dave@...olabs.net>,
        "Martin K. Petersen" <martin.petersen@...cle.com>,
        Chaitanya Kulkarni <kch@...dia.com>,
        Ming Lei <ming.lei@...hat.com>, linux-block@...r.kernel.org,
        linux-kernel@...r.kernel.org, linux-mtd@...ts.infradead.org,
        linux-efi@...r.kernel.org
Subject: Re: [PATCH v4 2/5] block: add partition parser for U-Boot uImage.FIT

On Wed, Nov 09, 2022 at 05:21:01PM +0000, Matthew Wilcox wrote:
> On Wed, Nov 09, 2022 at 02:36:11PM +0000, Daniel Golle wrote:
> > On Wed, Nov 09, 2022 at 01:58:29PM +0000, Matthew Wilcox wrote:
> > > ... actually, why can't you call read_part_sector() and avoid all of
> > > this?
> > 
> > I've tried that before and the problem is that read_part_sector()
> > returns a pointer to one sector (typically 512 bytes) of data.
> > And this pointer should not be accesses beyond sector boundaries,
> > right? You'd have to call read_part_sector() again for the next
> > sector.
> > 
> > The FIT structure, however, usually exceeds the size of one sector,
> > and having a continous memory area covering the structure as a whole
> > is crucial for libfdt to do its job.
> > 
> > I could, of course, use read_part_sector() to copy all sectors
> > covering the FIT structure into a buffer, but that seemed strange
> > given that read_part_sector() actually used read_mapping_page()
> > (and now uses read_mapping_folio()) internally and then returns a
> > pointer to the offset within the page/folio. So why not read it in one
> > piece in first place instead of having it first split up to sectors
> > by read_part_sector() just to then having to reassemble it into a
> > continous buffer again.
> 
> Are you guaranteed that it's "sufficiently" aligned on storage so
> that it fits entirely within a single page?  If not, you'll have
> to copy it, vmap it, or fix libfdt to handle a segmented buffer.

Yes, for the uImage.FIT to be usable for the partition parser it has
to be page-aligned.

There is a check which makes sure that this is the case:
> +	/* uImage.FIT should be aligned to page boundaries */
> +	if (fit_start_sector % (1 << (PAGE_SHIFT - SECTOR_SHIFT)))
> +		return 0;

In case of mtdblock or ubiblock devices, the image always starts at
offset 0, so this is never a problem.
In case of the image being stored in a GPT partition, one has to make
sure that the start sector of the partition is page aligned, otherwise
the above check will fail and the partition parser will bail out.