[PATCH] gianfar: Fix TX ring processing on SMP machines

Anton Vorontsov avorontsov at ru.mvista.com
Thu Mar 4 05:18:58 EST 2010


Starting with commit a3bc1f11e9b867a4f49505 ("gianfar: Revive SKB
recycling") gianfar driver sooner or later stops transmitting any
packets on SMP machines.

start_xmit() prepares new skb for transmitting, generally it does
three things:

1. sets up all BDs (marks them ready to send), except the first one.
2. stores skb into tx_queue->tx_skbuff so that clean_tx_ring()
   would cleanup it later.
3. sets up the first BD, i.e. marks it ready.

Here is what clean_tx_ring() does:

1. reads skbs from tx_queue->tx_skbuff
2. checks if the *last* BD is ready. If it's still ready [to send]
   then it it isn't transmitted, so clean_tx_ring() returns.
   Otherwise it actually cleanups BDs. All is OK.

Now, if there is just one BD, code flow:

- start_xmit(): stores skb into tx_skbuff. Note that the first BD
  (which is also the last one) isn't marked as ready, yet.
- clean_tx_ring(): sees that skb is not null, *and* its lstatus
  says that it is NOT ready (like if BD was sent), so it cleans
  it up (bad!)
- start_xmit(): marks BD as ready [to send], but it's too late.

We can fix this simply by reordering lstatus/tx_skbuff writes.

Reported-by: Martyn Welch <martyn.welch at ge.com>
Bisected-by: Paul Gortmaker <paul.gortmaker at windriver.com>
Signed-off-by: Anton Vorontsov <avorontsov at ru.mvista.com>
Tested-by: Paul Gortmaker <paul.gortmaker at windriver.com>
Tested-by: Martyn Welch <martyn.welch at ge.com>
Cc: Sandeep Gopalpet <Sandeep.Kumar at freescale.com>
Cc: Stable <stable at vger.kernel.org> [2.6.33]
---
 drivers/net/gianfar.c |    5 ++++-
 1 files changed, 4 insertions(+), 1 deletions(-)

diff --git a/drivers/net/gianfar.c b/drivers/net/gianfar.c
index 8bd3c9f..cccb409 100644
--- a/drivers/net/gianfar.c
+++ b/drivers/net/gianfar.c
@@ -2021,7 +2021,6 @@ static int gfar_start_xmit(struct sk_buff *skb, struct net_device *dev)
 	}
 
 	/* setup the TxBD length and buffer pointer for the first BD */
-	tx_queue->tx_skbuff[tx_queue->skb_curtx] = skb;
 	txbdp_start->bufPtr = dma_map_single(&priv->ofdev->dev, skb->data,
 			skb_headlen(skb), DMA_TO_DEVICE);
 
@@ -2053,6 +2052,10 @@ static int gfar_start_xmit(struct sk_buff *skb, struct net_device *dev)
 
 	txbdp_start->lstatus = lstatus;
 
+	eieio(); /* force lstatus write before tx_skbuff */
+
+	tx_queue->tx_skbuff[tx_queue->skb_curtx] = skb;
+
 	/* Update the current skb pointer to the next entry we will use
 	 * (wrapping if necessary) */
 	tx_queue->skb_curtx = (tx_queue->skb_curtx + 1) &
-- 
1.7.0


More information about the Linuxppc-dev mailing list