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authorMauro Carvalho Chehab <mchehab+samsung@kernel.org>2019-04-14 21:51:10 +0300
committerMauro Carvalho Chehab <mchehab+samsung@kernel.org>2019-07-15 15:20:24 +0300
commitdc7a12bdfccd94c31f79e294f16f7549bd411b49 (patch)
tree81da5ca148347b94c4539234f50d4bca6465e2f8 /Documentation/arm/mem_alignment
parent0d07cf5e53a21e35289adc3ab99b6804ff0c3833 (diff)
downloadlinux-dc7a12bdfccd94c31f79e294f16f7549bd411b49.tar.xz
docs: arm: convert docs to ReST and rename to *.rst
Converts ARM the text files to ReST, preparing them to be an architecture book. The conversion is actually: - add blank lines and identation in order to identify paragraphs; - fix tables markups; - add some lists markups; - mark literal blocks; - adjust title markups. At its new index.rst, let's add a :orphan: while this is not linked to the main index.rst file, in order to avoid build warnings. Signed-off-by: Mauro Carvalho Chehab <mchehab+samsung@kernel.org> Reviewed-by Corentin Labbe <clabbe.montjoie@gmail.com> # For sun4i-ss
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-Too many problems popped up because of unnoticed misaligned memory access in
-kernel code lately. Therefore the alignment fixup is now unconditionally
-configured in for SA11x0 based targets. According to Alan Cox, this is a
-bad idea to configure it out, but Russell King has some good reasons for
-doing so on some f***ed up ARM architectures like the EBSA110. However
-this is not the case on many design I'm aware of, like all SA11x0 based
-ones.
-
-Of course this is a bad idea to rely on the alignment trap to perform
-unaligned memory access in general. If those access are predictable, you
-are better to use the macros provided by include/asm/unaligned.h. The
-alignment trap can fixup misaligned access for the exception cases, but at
-a high performance cost. It better be rare.
-
-Now for user space applications, it is possible to configure the alignment
-trap to SIGBUS any code performing unaligned access (good for debugging bad
-code), or even fixup the access by software like for kernel code. The later
-mode isn't recommended for performance reasons (just think about the
-floating point emulation that works about the same way). Fix your code
-instead!
-
-Please note that randomly changing the behaviour without good thought is
-real bad - it changes the behaviour of all unaligned instructions in user
-space, and might cause programs to fail unexpectedly.
-
-To change the alignment trap behavior, simply echo a number into
-/proc/cpu/alignment. The number is made up from various bits:
-
-bit behavior when set
---- -----------------
-
-0 A user process performing an unaligned memory access
- will cause the kernel to print a message indicating
- process name, pid, pc, instruction, address, and the
- fault code.
-
-1 The kernel will attempt to fix up the user process
- performing the unaligned access. This is of course
- slow (think about the floating point emulator) and
- not recommended for production use.
-
-2 The kernel will send a SIGBUS signal to the user process
- performing the unaligned access.
-
-Note that not all combinations are supported - only values 0 through 5.
-(6 and 7 don't make sense).
-
-For example, the following will turn on the warnings, but without
-fixing up or sending SIGBUS signals:
-
- echo 1 > /proc/cpu/alignment
-
-You can also read the content of the same file to get statistical
-information on unaligned access occurrences plus the current mode of
-operation for user space code.
-
-
-Nicolas Pitre, Mar 13, 2001. Modified Russell King, Nov 30, 2001.