Hard fault RP2040 pico Zephyr - c

I'm using RP2040 under Zephyr and MCUboot. The final goal is to be able to update the firmware using MCUMGR over an UART bus. MCUboot use A/B seamless (dual slot memory) method to provide a safe update algorithm. When device reboot, MCUboot check if a new firmware is available and in this case boot on new firmware. To do this, a swap algorithm place the target firmware in slot 0. As this algorithm manipulate flash, some function has to be mapped inside SRAM to be sure that function doesn't erase his own code. Normally, code is directly executed from flash thanks to Direct-XIP on RP2040.
The problem is that SRAM seams to not be executable. When the program enter inside the function located in SRAM and execute the very first instruction this cause a hard fault:
0x2000c144 <flash_range_erase>: push {r4, r5, r6, r7, lr}
Fortunately, Zephyr crash's handler give some informations:
E: ***** HARD FAULT *****
E: r0/a1: 0x0003d000 r1/a2: 0x00002000 r2/a3: 0x00002000
E: r3/a4: 0x00000000 r12/ip: 0x2000c145 r14/lr: 0x100022e5
E: xpsr: 0x21000000
E: Faulting instruction address (r15/pc): 0x2000c144
E: >>> ZEPHYR FATAL ERROR 0: CPU exception on CPU 0
E: Current thread: 0x2000c3d0 (unknown)
E: Halting system
Everything seems normal and the address of the pc is correct. I strongly suspect a MPU misconfiguration which crash the program when executing code located in SRAM.
My question is:
Can MPU cause Hardfault ? How can i configure SRAM in Zephyr to execute code from SRAM ?
First, i tried to check if the function same is executable from flash. I removed the macro that indicate to located on flash.
Before:
void __no_inline_not_in_flash_func(flash_range_erase)(uint32_t flash_offs, size_t count) {
...
After:
void flash_range_erase(uint32_t flash_offs, size_t count) {
...
And ... it works ! The functions is executed as expected. I'm quite sure right now that the MPU is unhappy to let me execute code inside SRAM.
I searched informations about how to configure MPU to let me execute code in SRAM and i found this page: https://developer.nordicsemi.com/nRF_Connect_SDK/doc/latest/zephyr/hardware/arch/arm_cortex_m.html
That explain how to configure fixed regions. I added the following lines in my device tree overlay:
&sram0 {
/delete-property/ compatible ;
/delete-property/ reg ;
compatible = "zephyr,memory-region", "mmio-sram";
zephyr,memory-region = "RAM_EXECUTABLE";
zephyr,memory-region-mpu = "RAM";
reg = < 0x20000000 0x10000 >; //Configure SRAM for MCUboot fixed for MPU
// RAM size has to match with BOOTLOADER_SRAM_SIZE (see menuconfig)
};
But this didn't solve the problem.

It was an issue in flash controller of the RP2040 in Zephyr.
The flash controller has to disable XiP to run flash operations (r/w). During this process the controller tried to run a function that was not linked in RAM (was in flash).
To resume, the controller tried to call a function that was in flash after disabling the flash execution.
I'll probably post a patch soon.
More infos on Zephyr's discord here:
https://discord.com/channels/720317445772017664/938474761405726800/1060917537405157446
Note in my question i tried to use the MPU but i had to disable on bootloader configuration.

Related

How can I trace the cause of an invalid PC fault on Cortex M3?

I have an STM32 Cortex M3 that is experiencing an intermittent invalid PC (INVPC) fault. Unfortunately it takes a day or more to manifest and I don't know the cause.
I have the device paused in the debugger after the fault happened. The INVPC flag is set. The stacked registers are as follows:
0x08003555 xPSR
0x08006824 PC
0x08006824 LR
0x00000000 R12
0x08003341 R3
0x08006824 R2
0xFFFFFFFD R2
0x0000FFFF R0
Unfortunately the return address 0x08006824 is just past the end of the firmware image. The decompilation of that region is as follows:
Region$$Table$$Base
0x08006804: 08006824 $h.. DCD 134244388
0x08006808: 20000000 ... DCD 536870912
0x0800680c: 000000bc .... DCD 188
0x08006810: 08005b30 0[.. DCD 134241072
0x08006814: 080068e0 .h.. DCD 134244576
0x08006818: 200000bc ... DCD 536871100
0x0800681c: 00001a34 4... DCD 6708
0x08006820: 08005b40 #[.. DCD 134241088
Region$$Table$$Limit
** Section #2 'RW_IRAM1' (SHT_PROGBITS) [SHF_ALLOC + SHF_WRITE]
Size : 188 bytes (alignment 4)
Address: 0x20000000
I'm not sure this address is valid. The disassembly of that address in the debugger looks like nonsense, maybe data interpreted as code or something.
Is there any way I can trace this back to see where the exception happened? If necessary I can add some additional code to capture more information.
Don't sure how it works on Cortex M3, but on some other ARMs PSR register holds processor mode bits that could help you find out when it happens (in user mode, IRQ, FIQ etc). Each mode generally have it's own stack.
For user mode, if you use some RTOS with multi-tasking, you probably have many stacks for each task, but you could try to find out which task is current one (was running before crash).
When you find crashed task (or IRQ) you could try to look at it's stack for addresses of all routines and find out what was called before accident. Of course if stack was not unrecoverably corrupted.
This is what I'd start investigation from. If you find crashed task or even function but still have no idea what happens, you could make something like small circular history buffer where you write some codes on every step of your program, so you could find what it does last even if stack was destroyed.

Start to writing a bootloader for stm32l0 in IAR

What are the appropriate steps to write add a custom bootloader for stm32l0 in IAR? The following questions are not clear:
Do I make a new IAR Project?
If yes, do I write the bootloader like a normal project and just change my original .icf file so there is a small ROM and an small RAM region for the bootloader?
if no, what things do I have to configure in the IAR proejct apart from icf file and code?
what other things do I need to think of?
I'm having trouble starting into this.
So the icf would be for the main project:
__region_ROM_start__ = 0x08000000;
__region_ROM_end__ = 0x08008FFF;
So the icf would be for the bootloader project:
__region_Bootloader_ROM_start__ = 0x08009000;
__region_Bootloader_ROM_end__ = 0x08009FFF;
and the same thing for about 0xFF of RAM?
You do not need to restrict the RAM - you can use all of it because when you switch to the application a new run-time environment will be established and the RAM will be reused.
The flash you reserve for the bootloader must be a whole number of flash pages starting from the reset address The STM32L0 has very small flash pages so there should be minimal waste, but you don't want to have to change it if your bootloader grows, because then you will have to rebuild your application code for the new start address and old application images will no longer be loadable. So consider giving yourself a little headroom.
The bootloader can be built just like any other STM32L0xx project; the application code ROM configuration must start from an address above the bootloader. So for example say you have a 1Kbyte bootloader:
Boot ROM Start: 0x0800 0000
Boot ROM End: 0x0800 03FF
Application Start: 0x0800 0400
Application End: Part size dependent.
The bootloader itself must have a means of determining that an update is available, if an update is available it must then read the application data and write it to the application flash memory, it must then disable any interrupts that may have been enabled, it may also be necessary to deinitialise any peripherals used (if they remain active when the switch to the application is made it may cause problems), then the switch to the application code is made.
It is possible if the bootloader and application both run from the same clock configuration to minimise the configuration in the application and rely on the bootloader. This is a small space saving, but less flexible. If for example you make the bootloader run using the internal RC oscillator it will be portable across multiple hardware designs that may have differing application speed and clocking requirements and different external oscillator frequencies
The switch to the application is pretty simple on Cortex-M, it simply requires the vector table to be switched to the application's vector table, then the program-counter to be loaded - the latter requires a little assembly code. The following is for Cortex-M3, it may need some adaptation for M0+ but possibly not:
Given the following in-line assembly function:
__asm void boot_jump( uint32_t address )
{
LDR SP, [R0] ;Load new stack pointer address
LDR PC, [R0, #4] ;Load new program counter address
}
The bootloader switched to the application image thus:
// Switch off core clock before switching vector table
SysTick->CTRL = 0 ;
// Switch off any other enabled interrupts too
...
// Switch vector table
SCB->VTOR = APPLICATION_START_ADDR ;
//Jump to start address
boot_jump( APPLICATION_START_ADDR ) ;
Where APPLICATION_START_ADDR is the base address of the application area; this address is the start of the application's vector table, which starts with the initial stack pointer and reset vector, the boot_jump() function loads these into the SP and PC registers to start the application as if it had been started at reset. The application's reset vector contains the application's execution start address.
Your needs may vary, but in my experience a serial bootloader (using UART) using XMODEM and decoding an image in Intel Hex format takes about 4Kb of Flash. On an STM32L0 you may want to use something simpler - 1Kb is probably feasible if you simply stream raw binary the data and use hardware flow control (you need to control data flow because erasing and programming the flash takes time and also stops the CPU from running because you cannot on STM32 write flash memory while simultaneously fetching instructions from it).
See also: How to jump between programs in Stellaris

Enabling Interrupts in U-boot for ARM cortex A-9

I am trying to configure a GPIO interrupt in the uboot, This it to test the Interrupt response time without any OS intervention (Bare-metal). I was able to configure the pin-muxing and also successful in setting up the interrupt with the GPIO pin.
My question is regarding the registering of the interrupt service routine. I see that the Interrupt vector table for my platform is at address 0xFFFF0000 ( I read the System Control Register to find out this). The interrupt Id for the GPIO was 56 and with that i just calculated the address where my interrupt service routine should reside and just tried writing the address with the pointer to my ISR routine. Is this the right way of doing it? or i have to take care of the all the other things like context saving etc by myself?
Note : I am using an ARM Cortex A-9.
Edit :
Based on the answers i went through the code i have the following questions. The definition of
do_irq for my architecture( arm v7) is not doing much and the CONFIG_USE_IRQ does not work for me since functions like arch_interrupt_init are not defined for me. So i can conclude interrupts are not supported for my architecture. Now If i have to define this on my own what all functions i need to implement to get this working? Since this is a very small part of my proj and i would want to see if i can do this is feasible to implement. I just want to know if this requires few lines of code or requires some effort to implement this interrupt support.
The ARM vectors all interrupts to address 0xFFFF0018 (or 0x00000018). This is typically an unconditional branch. Then the code will inspect some interrupt controller hardware to determine the number 56. Typically, there is a routine to set the handler for the interrupt number, so you don't manually patch the code; this table is dependent on how the u-boot interrupt handling is implemented.
In my u-boot sourcenote, the interrupt table looks like this,
.globl _start
_start:
b reset
ldr pc, _undefined_instruction
ldr pc, _software_interrupt
ldr pc, _prefetch_abort
ldr pc, _data_abort
ldr pc, _not_used
ldr pc, _irq
ldr pc, _fiq
...
_irq:
.word irq
So _irq is a label to install a routine for interrupt handling; it does some assembler in the same file and then calls do_irq(), based on CONFIG_USE_IRQ. Part of the API is in *lib_arm/interrupts.c*. Some CPUs are defined to handler irqs, such as cpu/arm720t/interrupts.c, for a S3C4510B. Here you can see that the code gets a register from this controller and then branches to a table.
So by default u-boot doesn't seem to have support for interrupts. This is not surprising as a boot loader is usually polling based for simplicity and speed.
Note: My u-boot is base on 2009.01-rc3.

How to jump between programs in Stellaris

I am working on a boot loader for Stellaris LM3S1607 chip.
I am using Keil MicroVision4 C compiler.
The idea is to create 2 independent firmware that one will update another.
In firmware1 i downloaded firmware2 file and write it to flash in address 0x3200. untill here it is working. i also verifed that the data is being written to flash correct.
Now i have in flash two applications. one is my uip boot loader and the seoncd one is my main project.
i want to know how can i jump from the first program to the second program located in 0x3200.
If someone can help me to jump it will be great.
Thanks
This will work on any Cortex-M part...
Create an assembler function like:
__asm void boot_jump( uint32_t address )
{
LDR SP, [R0] ;Load new stack pointer address
LDR PC, [R0, #4] ;Load new program counter address
}
In-line assembler syntax varies; this example is Keil ARM-MDK / ARM RealView.
Then at the end of your bootloader:
// Switch off core clock before switching vector table
SysTick->CTRL = 0 ;
// Switch off any other enabled interrupts too
...
// Switch vector table
SCB->VTOR = APPLICATION_START_ADDR ;
//Jump to start address
boot_jump( APPLICATION_START_ADDR ) ;
Note that APPLICATION_START_ADDR in this case is the base or location address of your linked application code (0x3200 in this case), not the entry point indicated in the link map. The application vector table is located at this address, and the start of the vector table contains the application's initial stack pointer address and program counter (the actual code entry point).
The boot_jump() function loads a stack pointer and program counter from the application's vector table, simulating what happens on reset where they are loaded from the base of Flash memory (the bootloader's vector table).
Note that you must have set the start address in your application code's linker settings to the same as that which the bootloader will copy the image. If you are using the Keil debugger, you will not be able to load and run the application in the debugger without the bootloader present (or at least without manually setting the SP and PC correctly or using a debugger script), because the debugger loads the reset vector addresses rather than the application vector addresses.
It is important that interrupts are disabled before switching the vector table, otherwise any interrupt that occurs before the application is initialised will vector to the application's handler, and that may not be ready.
Be careful of any peripherals that you use in both the application and boot code, any assumptions about reset conditions may not hold if the peripheral registers have already been set by the boot code.

Setting up Interrupt Vector Table, ARMv6

I'm trying to use usermode and SVC in my ARMv6 bare metal application, but for this I need to set up the SVC entry of the ARMv6 interrupt vector table to branch to my interrupt handler. But, I can't find a good example on how to do this (ie: what memory address exactly I need to set, and to what). I have done similar things in the past, but always with a more comprehensive bootloader (RedBoot) that set up some of this for me. Any help would be appreciated.
I am testing my application using:
qemu-system-arm -M versatilepb -cpu arm1176
Are you talking about the SWI interrupt? Or one of the others (FIQ, IRQ). In either case I think I know what the problem is. Qemu is for running linux, your binary is not loaded at address 0x00000 so your entry points are not used by qemu for handling exceptions.
I have an example that uses qemu and implements a solution. Go to the qemu directory of http://github.com/dwelch67/yagbat. The qemu example is not really related to the gba thing in the yagbat repo, the gba is a 32 bit ARM thing so it was easy to borrow code from so I stuck it there.
The example was specifically written for your question as I tried to figure out how to use qemu in this manner. It appears that the address 0x00000000 space is simulated as ram, so you can re-write the qemu exception table and have the exceptions call code in the 0x10000 address space that your binary loads.
A quick and dirty solution is to make the entry point of the binary (that qemu loads to 0x10000) resemble a vector table at address 0x00000. The ldr pc instruction is relative to the program counter, the disassembly might show that it is loading an address at 0x10000 but it is really relative to the pc and the disassembler used the pc assuming the linked address being used.
.globl _start
_start:
ldr pc,start_vector_add
ldr pc,undef_vector_add
ldr pc,swi_vector_add
start_vector_add: .word start_vector
undef_vector_add: .word undef_vector
swi_vector_add: .word swi_vector
Then before you want to cause any interrupts, in the example I use the swi instruction to cause an swi interrupt. You copy enough of the code from 0x10000 to 0x00000 to include the exception table and the list of addresses that it loads into the pc. by linking your program to 0x10000 those addresses are in the 0x10000 range. When the interrupt occurs, the exception handler that you have now modified will load the 0x10000 based address into the pc and your handler in the 0x10000 range will get called.
Using this command line to run the binary in my example
qemu-system-arm -M versatilepb -m 128M -kernel hello_world.bin
and then ctrl-alt-3 (not F3 but 3) will switch to the serial console and you can see the output, and close that window to close out of qemu and stop the simulation.

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