• Tim Kryger's avatar
    serial: 8250_dw: Improve unwritable LCR workaround · c49436b6
    Tim Kryger authored
    When configured with UART_16550_COMPATIBLE=NO or in versions prior to
    the introduction of this option, the Designware UART will ignore writes
    to the LCR if the UART is busy.  The current workaround saves a copy of
    the last written LCR and re-writes it in the ISR for a special interrupt
    that is raised when a write was ignored.
    
    Unfortunately, interrupts are typically disabled prior to performing a
    sequence of register writes that include the LCR so the point at which
    the retry occurs is too late.  An example is serial8250_do_set_termios()
    where an ignored LCR write results in the baud divisor not being set and
    instead a garbage character is sent out the transmitter.
    
    Furthermore, since serial_port_out() offers no way to indicate failure,
    a serious effort must be made to ensure that the LCR is actually updated
    before returning back to the caller.  This is difficult, however, as a
    UART that was busy during the first attempt is likely to still be busy
    when a subsequent attempt is made unless some extra action is taken.
    
    This updated workaround reads back the LCR after each write to confirm
    that the new value was accepted by the hardware.  Should the hardware
    ignore a write, the TX/RX FIFOs are cleared and the receive buffer read
    before attempting to rewrite the LCR out of the hope that doing so will
    force the UART into an idle state.  While this may seem unnecessarily
    aggressive, writes to the LCR are used to change the baud rate, parity,
    stop bit, or data length so the data that may be lost is likely not
    important.  Admittedly, this is far from ideal but it seems to be the
    best that can be done given the hardware limitations.
    
    Lastly, the revised workaround doesn't touch the LCR in the ISR, so it
    avoids the possibility of a "serial8250: too much work for irq" lock up.
    This problem is rare in real situations but can be reproduced easily by
    wiring up two UARTs and running the following commands.
    
      # stty -F /dev/ttyS1 echo
      # stty -F /dev/ttyS2 echo
      # cat /dev/ttyS1 &
      [1] 375
      # echo asdf > /dev/ttyS1
      asdf
    
      [   27.700000] serial8250: too much work for irq96
      [   27.700000] serial8250: too much work for irq96
      [   27.710000] serial8250: too much work for irq96
      [   27.710000] serial8250: too much work for irq96
      [   27.720000] serial8250: too much work for irq96
      [   27.720000] serial8250: too much work for irq96
      [   27.730000] serial8250: too much work for irq96
      [   27.730000] serial8250: too much work for irq96
      [   27.740000] serial8250: too much work for irq96
    Signed-off-by: default avatarTim Kryger <tim.kryger@linaro.org>
    Reviewed-by: default avatarMatt Porter <matt.porter@linaro.org>
    Reviewed-by: default avatarMarkus Mayer <markus.mayer@linaro.org>
    Reviewed-by: default avatarHeikki Krogerus <heikki.krogerus@linux.intel.com>
    Signed-off-by: default avatarGreg Kroah-Hartman <gregkh@linuxfoundation.org>
    c49436b6
8250_dw.c 11.6 KB