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path: root/Documentation/debugging-via-ohci1394.txt
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2014-01-20firewire: Enable remote DMA above 4 GBStefan Richter
This makes all of a machine's memory accessible to remote debugging via FireWire, using the physical response unit (i.e. RDMA) of OHCI-1394 link layer controllers. This requires actual support by the controller. The only ones currently known to support it are Agere/LSI FW643. Most if not all other OHCI-1394 controllers do not implement the optional Physical Upper Bound register. With them, RDMA will continue to be limited to the lowermost 4 GB. firewire-ohci's startup message in the kernel log is augmented to tell whether the controller does expose more than 4 GB to RDMA. While OHCI-1394 allows for a maximum Physical Upper Bound of 0xffff'0000'0000 (near 256 TB), this implementation sets it to 0x8000'0000'0000 (128 TB) in order to avoid interference with applications that require interrupt-served asynchronous request reception at respectively low addresses. Note, this change does not switch remote DMA on. It only increases the range of remote access to all memory (instead of just 4 GB) whenever remote DMA was switched on by other means. The latter is achieved by setting firewire-ohci's remote_dma parameter, or if the physical DMA filter is opened through firewire-sbp2. Derived from patch "firewire: Enable physical DMA above 4GB" by Peter Hurley <peter@hurleysoftware.com> from March 27, 2013. Signed-off-by: Stefan Richter <stefanr@s5r6.in-berlin.de>
2014-01-12firewire: ohci: Turn remote DMA support into a module parameterLubomir Rintel
This makes it possible to debug kernel over FireWire without the need to recompile it. [Stefan R: changed description from "...0" to "...N"] Cc: Dave Hansen <dave.hansen@linux.intel.com> Signed-off-by: Lubomir Rintel <lkundrak@v3.sk> Signed-off-by: Stefan Richter <stefanr@s5r6.in-berlin.de>
2014-01-12Documentation/: update FireWire debugging documentationLubomir Rintel
The old firewire stack is long dead now and a new version firescope has been released with support for current kernels. Signed-off-by: Lubomir Rintel <lkundrak@v3.sk> Cc: Rob Landley <rob@landley.net> Cc: Justin P. Mattock <justinmattock@gmail.com> Cc: Bernhard Kaindl <bk@suse.de> Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@linux-foundation.org> Signed-off-by: Stefan Richter <stefanr@s5r6.in-berlin.de>
2009-10-03ieee1394: update URLs in debugging-via-ohci1394.txtJustin P. Mattock
Update URLs of the userspace tools to use ohci1394_dma=early for debugging. Seems the address ftp://ftp.suse.de/private/bk/firewire/tools/* is not very helpful. After a quick search, seems this was talked about: http://www.mail-archive.com/kgdb-bugreport@lists.sourceforge.net/msg02761.html (can't find the original thread). Signed-off-by: Justin P. Mattock <justinmattock@gmail.com> Signed-off-by: Stefan Richter <stefanr@s5r6.in-berlin.de>
2008-04-18firewire: fw-ohci: add option for remote debuggingStefan Richter
This way firewire-ohci can be used for remote debugging like ohci1394. Version with amendment from Fri, 11 Apr 2008 00:08:08 +0200. Signed-off-by: Stefan Richter <stefanr@s5r6.in-berlin.de> Acked-by: Bernhard Kaindl <bk@suse.de>
2008-02-19Documentation: correction to debugging-via-ohci1394Stefan Richter
Rectify a factoid about firewire-ohci. Acked-by: Ingo Molnar <mingo@elte.hu> Also fix a typo spotted by Bernhard Kaindl. Signed-off-by: Stefan Richter <stefanr@s5r6.in-berlin.de>
2008-01-30x86: early boot debugging via FireWire (ohci1394_dma=early)Bernhard Kaindl
This patch adds a new configuration option, which adds support for a new early_param which gets checked in arch/x86/kernel/setup_{32,64}.c:setup_arch() to decide wether OHCI-1394 FireWire controllers should be initialized and enabled for physical DMA access to allow remote debugging of early problems like issues ACPI or other subsystems which are executed very early. If the config option is not enabled, no code is changed, and if the boot paramenter is not given, no new code is executed, and independent of that, all new code is freed after boot, so the config option can be even enabled in standard, non-debug kernels. With specialized tools, it is then possible to get debugging information from machines which have no serial ports (notebooks) such as the printk buffer contents, or any data which can be referenced from global pointers, if it is stored below the 4GB limit and even memory dumps of of the physical RAM region below the 4GB limit can be taken without any cooperation from the CPU of the host, so the machine can be crashed early, it does not matter. In the extreme, even kernel debuggers can be accessed in this way. I wrote a small kgdb module and an accompanying gdb stub for FireWire which allows to gdb to talk to kgdb using remote remory reads and writes over FireWire. An version of the gdb stub fore FireWire is able to read all global data from a system which is running a a normal kernel without any kernel debugger, without any interruption or support of the system's CPU. That way, e.g. the task struct and so on can be read and even manipulated when the physical DMA access is granted. A HOWTO is included in this patch, in Documentation/debugging-via-ohci1394.txt and I've put a copy online at ftp://ftp.suse.de/private/bk/firewire/docs/debugging-via-ohci1394.txt It also has links to all the tools which are available to make use of it another copy of it is online at: ftp://ftp.suse.de/private/bk/firewire/kernel/ohci1394_dma_early-v2.diff Signed-Off-By: Bernhard Kaindl <bk@suse.de> Tested-By: Thomas Renninger <trenn@suse.de> Signed-off-by: Ingo Molnar <mingo@elte.hu> Signed-off-by: Thomas Gleixner <tglx@linutronix.de>