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Diffstat (limited to 'doc/arch/sandbox.rst')
| -rw-r--r-- | doc/arch/sandbox.rst | 102 |
1 files changed, 94 insertions, 8 deletions
diff --git a/doc/arch/sandbox.rst b/doc/arch/sandbox.rst index bfc9cc6a139..068d4a3be40 100644 --- a/doc/arch/sandbox.rst +++ b/doc/arch/sandbox.rst @@ -495,18 +495,104 @@ It is possible to run U-Boot under valgrind to check memory allocations:: valgrind ./u-boot -For more detailed results, enable `CONFIG_VALGRIND`. There are many false -positives due to `malloc` itself. Suppress these with:: +However, this does not give very useful results. The sandbox allocates a memory +pool via mmap(). U-Boot's internal malloc() and free() work on this memory pool. +Custom allocators and deallocators are invisible to valgrind by default. To +expose U-Boot's malloc() and free() to valgrind, enable ``CONFIG_VALGRIND``. +Enabling this option will inject placeholder assembler code which valgrind +interprets. This is used to annotate sections of memory as safe or unsafe, and +to inform valgrind about malloc()s and free()s. There are currently no standard +placeholder assembly sequences for RISC-V, so this option cannot be enabled on +that architecture. + +Malloc's bookkeeping information is marked as unsafe by default. However, this +will generate many false positives when malloc itself accesses this information. +These warnings can be suppressed with:: valgrind --suppressions=scripts/u-boot.supp ./u-boot -If you are running sandbox SPL or TPL, then valgrind will not by default -notice when U-Boot jumps from TPL to SPL, or from SPL to U-Boot proper. To -fix this, use `--trace-children=yes`. To show who alloc'd some troublesome -memory, use `--track-origins=yes`. To uncover possible errors, try running all -unit tests with:: +Additionally, you may experience false positives if U-Boot is using a smaller +pointer size than your host architecture. This is because the pointers used by +U-Boot will only contain 32 bits of addressing information. When interpreted as +64-bit pointers, valgrind will think that they are not initialized properly. To +fix this, enable ``CONFIG_SANDBOX64`` (such as via ``sandbox64_defconfig``) +when running on a 64-bit host. - valgrind --track-origins=yes --suppressions=scripts/u-boot.supp ./u-boot -Tc 'ut all' +Additional options +^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ + +The following valgrind options are useful in addition to the above examples: + +``--trace-childen=yes`` + tells valgrind to keep tracking subprocesses, such + as when U-Boot jumps from TPL to SPL, or from SPL to U-Boot proper. + +``--track-origins=yes`` + will (for a small overhead) tell valgrind to keep + track of who allocated some troublesome memory. + +``--error-limit`` + will enable printing more than 1000 errors in a single session. + +``--vgdb=yes --vgdb-error=0`` + will let you use GDB to attach like:: + + gdb -ex "target remote | vgdb" u-boot + + This is very helpful for inspecting the program state when there is + an error. + +The following U-Boot option are also helpful: + +``-Tc 'ut all'`` + lets U-Boot run unit tests automatically. Note + that not all unit tests will succeed in the default configuration. + +``-t cooked`` + will keep the console in a sane state if you + terminate it early (instead of having to run tset). + +Future work +^^^^^^^^^^^ + +The biggest limitation to the current approach is that supressions don't +"un-taint" uninitialized memory accesses. Currently, dlmalloc's bookkeeping +information is marked as a "red zone." This means that all reads to that zone +are marked as illegal by valgrind. This is fine for regular code, but dlmalloc +really does need to access this area, so we suppress its violations. However, if +dlmalloc then passes a result calculated from a "tainted" access, that result is +still tainted. So the first accessor will raise a warning. This means that every +construct like + +.. code-block:: + + foo = malloc(sizeof(*foo)); + if (!foo) + return -ENOMEM; + +will raise a warning when we check the result of malloc. Whoops. + +There are at least four possible ways to address this: + +* Don't mark dlmalloc bookkeeping information as a red zone. This is the + simplest solution, but reduces the power of valgrind immensely, since we can + no longer determine that (e.g.) access past the end of an array is undefined. +* Implement red zones properly. This would involve growing every allocation by a + fixed amount (16 bytes or so) and then using that extra space for a real red + zone that neither regular code nor dlmalloc needs to access. Unfortunately, + this would probably some fairly intensive surgery to dlmalloc to add/remove + the offset appropriately. +* Mark bookkeeping information as valid before we use it in dlmalloc, and then + mark it invalid before returning. This would be the most correct, but it would + be very tricky to implement since there are so many code paths to mark. I + think it would be the most effort out of the three options here. +* Use the host malloc and free instead of U-Boot's custom allocator. This will + eliminate the need to annotate dlmalloc. However, using a different allocator + for sandbox will mean that bugs in dlmalloc will only be tested when running + on read (or emulated) hardware. + +Until one of the above options are implemented, it will remain difficult +to sift through the massive amount of spurious warnings. Testing ------- |