Re: [PATCH] net: nixge: Add __packed attribute to DMA descriptor struct

[Moritz Fischer]

Hi Florian,

On Tue, Jun 19, 2018 at 10:13 AM, Florian Fainelli <f.fainelli@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> On 06/19/2018 09:54 AM, Moritz Fischer wrote:
>> Add __packed attribute to DMA descriptor structure  in order to
>> make sure that the DMA engine's alignemnt requirements are met.
>>
>> Fixes commit 492caffa8a1a ("net: ethernet: nixge: Add support for
>> National Instruments XGE netdev")
>> Signed-off-by: Moritz Fischer <mdf@xxxxxxxxxx>
>> ---
>>
>> Hi David,
>>
>> this addresses an issue where padding occured breaking the alignment
>> in the array the descriptors are allocated in coherent memory.
>> This was discovered when we tried to bring up the driver via a PCIe
>> bridge on x86.
>
> How could padding be inserted given than all of the structure members
> are naturally aligned (all u32 type). Compiler bug?

I have no good answer to this, all I can tell you is that it wouldn't work
otherwise. This was part of a bunch of changes that I made in order
to make this work with 64bit DMA. I made sure to remove the padding/
reserved fields accordingly such that the net difference would be zero.

I might've messed that up? The descriptors looked something like this:

struct nixge_hw_dma_bd {
#ifdef CONFIG_ARCH_DMA_ADDR_T_64BIT
        u64 next;
        u64 phys;
#else
        u32 next;
        u32 reserved1;
        u32 phys;
        u32 reserved2;
#endif
        u32 reserved3;
        u32 reserved4;
        u32 cntrl;
        u32 status;
        u32 app0;
        u32 app1;
        u32 app2;
        u32 app3;
        u32 app4;
#ifdef CONFIG_ARCH_DMA_ADDR_T_64BIT
        u64 sw_id_offset;
#else
        u32 sw_id_offset;
        u32 reserved5;
#endif
        u32 reserved6;
} __packed;


I'll have some follow up patches to add 64bit support together with a
wrapper driver for the PCIe bridge once the architecture solidifies here.

Thanks for the feedback,

Moritz