linux/Documentation/debugging-via-ohci1394.txt
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   1===========================================================================
   2Using physical DMA provided by OHCI-1394 FireWire controllers for debugging
   3===========================================================================
   4
   5Introduction
   6------------
   7
   8Basically all FireWire controllers which are in use today are compliant
   9to the OHCI-1394 specification which defines the controller to be a PCI
  10bus master which uses DMA to offload data transfers from the CPU and has
  11a "Physical Response Unit" which executes specific requests by employing
  12PCI-Bus master DMA after applying filters defined by the OHCI-1394 driver.
  13
  14Once properly configured, remote machines can send these requests to
  15ask the OHCI-1394 controller to perform read and write requests on
  16physical system memory and, for read requests, send the result of
  17the physical memory read back to the requester.
  18
  19With that, it is possible to debug issues by reading interesting memory
  20locations such as buffers like the printk buffer or the process table.
  21
  22Retrieving a full system memory dump is also possible over the FireWire,
  23using data transfer rates in the order of 10MB/s or more.
  24
  25With most FireWire controllers, memory access is limited to the low 4 GB
  26of physical address space.  This can be a problem on IA64 machines where
  27memory is located mostly above that limit, but it is rarely a problem on
  28more common hardware such as x86, x86-64 and PowerPC.
  29
  30At least LSI FW643e and FW643e2 controllers are known to support access to
  31physical addresses above 4 GB, but this feature is currently not enabled by
  32Linux.
  33
  34Together with a early initialization of the OHCI-1394 controller for debugging,
  35this facility proved most useful for examining long debugs logs in the printk
  36buffer on to debug early boot problems in areas like ACPI where the system
  37fails to boot and other means for debugging (serial port) are either not
  38available (notebooks) or too slow for extensive debug information (like ACPI).
  39
  40Drivers
  41-------
  42
  43The firewire-ohci driver in drivers/firewire uses filtered physical
  44DMA by default, which is more secure but not suitable for remote debugging.
  45Pass the remote_dma=1 parameter to the driver to get unfiltered physical DMA.
  46
  47Because the firewire-ohci driver depends on the PCI enumeration to be
  48completed, an initialization routine which runs pretty early has been
  49implemented for x86.  This routine runs long before console_init() can be
  50called, i.e. before the printk buffer appears on the console.
  51
  52To activate it, enable CONFIG_PROVIDE_OHCI1394_DMA_INIT (Kernel hacking menu:
  53Remote debugging over FireWire early on boot) and pass the parameter
  54"ohci1394_dma=early" to the recompiled kernel on boot.
  55
  56Tools
  57-----
  58
  59firescope - Originally developed by Benjamin Herrenschmidt, Andi Kleen ported
  60it from PowerPC to x86 and x86_64 and added functionality, firescope can now
  61be used to view the printk buffer of a remote machine, even with live update.
  62
  63Bernhard Kaindl enhanced firescope to support accessing 64-bit machines
  64from 32-bit firescope and vice versa:
  65- http://v3.sk/~lkundrak/firescope/
  66
  67and he implemented fast system dump (alpha version - read README.txt):
  68- http://halobates.de/firewire/firedump-0.1.tar.bz2
  69
  70There is also a gdb proxy for firewire which allows to use gdb to access
  71data which can be referenced from symbols found by gdb in vmlinux:
  72- http://halobates.de/firewire/fireproxy-0.33.tar.bz2
  73
  74The latest version of this gdb proxy (fireproxy-0.34) can communicate (not
  75yet stable) with kgdb over an memory-based communication module (kgdbom).
  76
  77Getting Started
  78---------------
  79
  80The OHCI-1394 specification regulates that the OHCI-1394 controller must
  81disable all physical DMA on each bus reset.
  82
  83This means that if you want to debug an issue in a system state where
  84interrupts are disabled and where no polling of the OHCI-1394 controller
  85for bus resets takes place, you have to establish any FireWire cable
  86connections and fully initialize all FireWire hardware __before__ the
  87system enters such state.
  88
  89Step-by-step instructions for using firescope with early OHCI initialization:
  90
  911) Verify that your hardware is supported:
  92
  93   Load the firewire-ohci module and check your kernel logs.
  94   You should see a line similar to::
  95
  96     firewire_ohci 0000:15:00.1: added OHCI v1.0 device as card 2, 4 IR + 4 IT
  97     ... contexts, quirks 0x11
  98
  99   when loading the driver. If you have no supported controller, many PCI,
 100   CardBus and even some Express cards which are fully compliant to OHCI-1394
 101   specification are available. If it requires no driver for Windows operating
 102   systems, it most likely is. Only specialized shops have cards which are not
 103   compliant, they are based on TI PCILynx chips and require drivers for Windows
 104   operating systems.
 105
 106   The mentioned kernel log message contains the string "physUB" if the
 107   controller implements a writable Physical Upper Bound register.  This is
 108   required for physical DMA above 4 GB (but not utilized by Linux yet).
 109
 1102) Establish a working FireWire cable connection:
 111
 112   Any FireWire cable, as long at it provides electrically and mechanically
 113   stable connection and has matching connectors (there are small 4-pin and
 114   large 6-pin FireWire ports) will do.
 115
 116   If an driver is running on both machines you should see a line like::
 117
 118     firewire_core 0000:15:00.1: created device fw1: GUID 00061b0020105917, S400
 119
 120   on both machines in the kernel log when the cable is plugged in
 121   and connects the two machines.
 122
 1233) Test physical DMA using firescope:
 124
 125   On the debug host, make sure that /dev/fw* is accessible,
 126   then start firescope::
 127
 128        $ firescope
 129        Port 0 (/dev/fw1) opened, 2 nodes detected
 130
 131        FireScope
 132        ---------
 133        Target : <unspecified>
 134        Gen    : 1
 135        [Ctrl-T] choose target
 136        [Ctrl-H] this menu
 137        [Ctrl-Q] quit
 138
 139    ------> Press Ctrl-T now, the output should be similar to:
 140
 141        2 nodes available, local node is: 0
 142         0: ffc0, uuid: 00000000 00000000 [LOCAL]
 143         1: ffc1, uuid: 00279000 ba4bb801
 144
 145   Besides the [LOCAL] node, it must show another node without error message.
 146
 1474) Prepare for debugging with early OHCI-1394 initialization:
 148
 149   4.1) Kernel compilation and installation on debug target
 150
 151   Compile the kernel to be debugged with CONFIG_PROVIDE_OHCI1394_DMA_INIT
 152   (Kernel hacking: Provide code for enabling DMA over FireWire early on boot)
 153   enabled and install it on the machine to be debugged (debug target).
 154
 155   4.2) Transfer the System.map of the debugged kernel to the debug host
 156
 157   Copy the System.map of the kernel be debugged to the debug host (the host
 158   which is connected to the debugged machine over the FireWire cable).
 159
 1605) Retrieving the printk buffer contents:
 161
 162   With the FireWire cable connected, the OHCI-1394 driver on the debugging
 163   host loaded, reboot the debugged machine, booting the kernel which has
 164   CONFIG_PROVIDE_OHCI1394_DMA_INIT enabled, with the option ohci1394_dma=early.
 165
 166   Then, on the debugging host, run firescope, for example by using -A::
 167
 168        firescope -A System.map-of-debug-target-kernel
 169
 170   Note: -A automatically attaches to the first non-local node. It only works
 171   reliably if only connected two machines are connected using FireWire.
 172
 173   After having attached to the debug target, press Ctrl-D to view the
 174   complete printk buffer or Ctrl-U to enter auto update mode and get an
 175   updated live view of recent kernel messages logged on the debug target.
 176
 177   Call "firescope -h" to get more information on firescope's options.
 178
 179Notes
 180-----
 181
 182Documentation and specifications: http://halobates.de/firewire/
 183
 184FireWire is a trademark of Apple Inc. - for more information please refer to:
 185https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FireWire
 186