Re: [PATCH] ALSA: ctxfi: Limit PTP to a single page

From: Harin Lee

Date: Mon Apr 06 2026 - 06:33:16 EST


On 4/6/26 5:50 PM, Takashi Iwai wrote:
On Mon, 06 Apr 2026 09:48:57 +0200,
Harin Lee wrote:

Commit 391e69143d0a increased CT_PTP_NUM from 1 to 4 to support 256
playback streams, but the additional pages are not used by the card
correctly. The CT20K2 hardware already has multiple VMEM_PTPAL
registers, but using them separately would require refactoring the
entire virtual memory allocation logic.

ct_vm_map() always uses PTEs in vm->ptp[0].area regardless of
CT_PTP_NUM. On AMD64 systems, a single PTP covers 512 PTEs (2M). When
aggregate memory allocations exceed this limit, ct_vm_map() tries to
access beyond the allocated space and causes a page fault:

BUG: unable to handle page fault for address: ffffd4ae8a10a000
Oops: Oops: 0002 [#1] SMP PTI
RIP: 0010:ct_vm_map+0x17c/0x280 [snd_ctxfi]
Call Trace:
atc_pcm_playback_prepare+0x225/0x3b0
ct_pcm_playback_prepare+0x38/0x60
snd_pcm_do_prepare+0x2f/0x50
snd_pcm_action_single+0x36/0x90
snd_pcm_action_nonatomic+0xbf/0xd0
snd_pcm_ioctl+0x28/0x40
__x64_sys_ioctl+0x97/0xe0
do_syscall_64+0x81/0x610
entry_SYSCALL_64_after_hwframe+0x76/0x7e

Revert CT_PTP_NUM to 1. The 256 SRC_RESOURCE_NUM and playback_count
remain unchanged.

Fixes: 391e69143d0a ("ALSA: ctxfi: Bump playback substreams to 256")
Cc: stable@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Signed-off-by: Harin Lee <me@xxxxxxxxx>

Applied to for-next branch now, as it's no regression in 7.0, per se.

But, I wonder whether fixing in ctvmem.c would be relatively easy.
Isn't it only about ct_vm_map() and ct_get_ptp_phys()?


thanks,

Takashi

Hi Takashi.

info.vm_pgt_phys is set in atc_create_hw_devs().

...
/* Initialize card hardware. */
info.rsr = atc->rsr;
info.msr = atc->msr;
info.vm_pgt_phys = atc_get_ptp_phys(atc, 0);
err = hw->card_init(hw, &info);
if (err < 0)
return err;
...

The atc_get_ptp_phys() function actually calls ct_get_ptp_phys().
However, the index is 0, which only retrieves the address of the
first PTP.

The hw_trn_init() for CT20K1 and CT20K2 writes the value of
info.vm_pgt_phys to the hardware registers.

...
ptp_phys_low = (u32)info->vm_pgt_phys;
ptp_phys_high = upper_32_bits(info->vm_pgt_phys);
...

CT20K1 implementation writes to the PTPALX and PTPAHX registers.
CT20K2 implementation writes same single PTP address to all 64
VMEM_PTPAL and VMEM_PTPAH registers.

We don't know if CT20K2 hardware actually supports independent PTPs,
and refactoring would be risky. So I think the current approach is
the safest for now.

This is what I've found so far.

Thanks.
Harin Lee