[ECOS] Stack access violations in eCos

[Jonathan Larmour]

Nick Garnett wrote:
> Jonathan Larmour <jifl@eCosCentric.com> writes:
> 
> 
>>One _potential_ problem is that some align the stack to say 16 byte
>>alignment *but* then go and take off some space for a saved context -
>>normally sizeof(HAL_SavedRegisters) but there are some differences in
>>different architectures. The result is something that may now only be
>>4 byte aligned, which may cause problems for those archs that need
>>more, most obviously FP doubles being 8 byte aligned.
> 
> 
> In theory the size of HAL_SavedRegisters should preserve the alignment
> after being pushed on to the stack. The MIPS structures even has some
> padding to ensure this. But we only need to keep the alignment of the
> fields within the structure.

Mostly - the alignment constraints of a CYG_WORD64 may not be the same as 
a double, but that just requires care by the HAL author. The question is 
whether that care has been taken everywhere :-).

 > Nothing is going to be pushed on top of
> it since this is always the "top" object on the stack during context
> switch. The 16 byte alignment is what we need to stack to be after the
> context is restored.

Yep - twas my point. For example MIPS does indeed do this right:

     _sp_ = _sp_ & 0xFFFFFFF0; 

     _regs_ = (HAL_SavedRegisters *)(((_sp_) - 
sizeof(HAL_SavedRegisters))&0xFFFFFFF0);  \

but PowerPC has
      register CYG_WORD _sp_ = (((CYG_WORD)_sparg_) &~15) - 
CYGARC_PPC_STACK_FRAME_SIZE;

which _might_ be right but might not - the ~15 implies it should be 16 
byte aligned, but since CYGARC_PPC_STACK_FRAME_SIZE is 56 which isn't a 
multiple of 16, it's only going to end up being 8 byte aligned.

> Interrupts and exceptions usually drop the stack by an exception
> decrement value, which is sizeof(HAL_SavedRegisters) plus a safety
> margin plus some padding to align it correctly.

You hope :-).

For SH at least, it didn't even have the init context right, so who knows 
about further context saves (and it turns out SH was Robert's target after 
all!).

Jifl
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