2010-02-23 05:06:24     FAT 32 K cluster

2010-02-23 05:06:24     FAT 32 K cluster

Karthikeyan Jeevanandam (INDIA)

Message: 86374   

Hi Mike,

uClinux is crashing with "Data access misaligned address violation" - "Bus Error" in the following scenario

1.Partition a USB HDD with FAT32 partition

2.Format the FAT32 partition with 32k cluster size

3.Create a  folder with some files under it

4. Mount the USB

5. Switch to mounted dir and give "ls" command

Please let us know the reason behind it.

Processor: BF527

uClinux distribution: 2009RC1

Let me know if you need more info

Regards,

Karthik

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2010-02-23 07:02:23     Re: FAT 32 K cluster

Mike Frysinger (UNITED STATES)

Message: 86375   

see if it fails w/out USB in the stack.  create a FAT32 file image and loop mount it.

dd if=/dev/zero of=file count=<some count> .......

mkfs.vfat flie ......

mount -o loop file .........

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2010-02-23 08:29:49     Re: FAT 32 K cluster

Wolfgang Muees (GERMANY)

Message: 86380   

Hmmmm...

there was an Issue with 32 KByte Clustersize with the "ls" command of Busybox:

There was a buffer allocated on the stack, and with 32 KByte Clustersize, this buffer has done a stack overflow.

The fix was to allocate the buffer on the heap, or set a bigger stacksize for Busybox.

You will also get this issue on FAT16 devices with 32 KByte Cluster (2 GTBytes).

(someone should fix this issue in Busybox).

regards

Wolfgang

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2010-02-23 08:38:51     Re: FAT 32 K cluster

Mike Frysinger (UNITED STATES)

Message: 86381   

post a diff and/or file/line reference in busybox for someone to look at

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2010-02-23 11:52:24     Re: FAT 32 K cluster

Wolfgang Muees (GERMANY)

Message: 86389   

Oh well,

this was long ago - and I had to ask another programmer about that.

OK, here it comes. The "error" is in uClibc (which is in the toolchain, I believe).

In /libc/sysdeps/linux/common/getdents.c, there is the function

__getdents(fd, buf, nbytes)

This function is using alloca() to alloc nbytes on the stack(!).

This function is called from

/libc/misc/dirent/readdir.c

bytes = __getdents(dir->dd_fd, dir->dd_buf, dir->dd_max);

So, if dir->dd_max is big (depending on the clustersize), the alloca() is exceeding the limit of the uclinux stack.

This problem is revealing first if you have a multi-threaded application, because the thread stack is smaller than the application stack.

Using MIN(dir->dd_max, 2048) in the call to __getdents() has resolved the problem (recorded from the memory of the gui who fixed the error).

Mike, can you please check this out and file a patch to uclibc?

regards

Wolfgang

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2010-02-23 11:56:36     Re: FAT 32 K cluster

Mike Frysinger (UNITED STATES)

Message: 86390   

i thought we fixed the getdents issues in uClibc ... i'll have to check it again, thanks

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2010-02-23 22:28:43     Re: FAT 32 K cluster

Karthikeyan Jeevanandam (INDIA)

Message: 86411   

Hi Wolfgang, Mike,

Thanks for the information. Please let us know the patch details for this issue.

Regards,

Karthik

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2010-02-24 02:44:06     Re: FAT 32 K cluster

Wolfgang Muees (GERMANY)

Message: 86416   

As I though a little more about it...

it may be wise to do a grep for __getdents in the whole uClibc. And it may also be wise to make a grep for alloca.

These stack-overwrites are hard to identify, especially for threaded applications.

regards

Wolfgang