[Buildroot] [PATCH] package/libnss: fix ppc 32-bit build failure

Vincent Fazio vfazio at xes-inc.com
Fri Jan 3 16:22:57 UTC 2020


Giulio,

On 1/2/20 3:41 PM, Giulio Benetti wrote:
> Hi Vincent,
>
> On 1/2/20 9:54 PM, Vincent Fazio wrote:
>> Giulio,
>>
>> Are you dropping this file for 32bit builds due to the Altivec
>> requirements? General Altivec instructions are available on 32bit chips,
>> such as those from Freescale/NXP. The e600 is a product that comes to
>> mind. IMO, the Makefile should include the file if the architecture is
>> 'ppc'. I think it makes sense that the source file should determine what
>> it compiles down to. It's possible the hw acceleration logic for PPC
>> changes later and this is one more file that would need to be touched.
>>
>> Unfortunately, this is where it gets a bit more complicated...
>>
>> The backing instruction for the vec_xl_be compiler intrinsic is lxvd2x
>> (a VSX instruction). Technically I think this instruction was available
>> in the Power ISA as early as 2.06, but GCC is only advertising the
>> intrinsic as of ISA 3.0 (Power 9+).
>> https://gcc.gnu.org/onlinedocs/gcc-8.3.0/gcc/PowerPC-Built-in-Functions.html#PowerPC-Built-in-Functions 
>>
>>
>> I've always had issues reading the logic behind GCC's instruction
>> generation and I don't have 8+ handy... I'm not sure if there's a guard
>> to prevent the lxvd2x instruction from being emitted or not when
>> resolving vec_xl_be and, say, '-maltivec -mpcu=7450' is specified. If
>> there isn't, I'd expect either an illegal instruction exception or for
>> the kernel to emulate it magically. If there is, I'd expect GCC to
>> either compile a compatible instruction shim or to simply error out.
>>
>> Regardless, given the way the hardware acceleration is written currently
>> to require that compiler intrinsic, USE_PPC_CRYPTO may need to be
>> guarded by __builtin_cpu_supports("arch_3_00")
>
> They are all good suggestions but I think they are more NSS related 
> than Buildroot related. What I'm trying to do here is to avoid build 
> failure in Buildroot and as much as possible to try to contribute 
> upstream. As you've mentioned above 32-bit supports Altivec, but the 
> problem at the moment is that USE_PPC_CRYPTO is defined in gcm.h only 
> if __powerpc64__ is defined, this means that they only tested it for 
> that architecture(ppc64 and ppc64le). So at the moment I'd prefer keep 
> 32-bit Altivec supported devices without gcm altivec acceleration. But 
> if you have a patch that takes into account 32-bits Altivec too, 
> please upload it here:
>
For Buildroot, we can likely key off 
ifneq($(BR2_POWERPC_CPU_HAS_ALTIVEC),y) and sed delete the '-mcrypto 
-maltivec' flags from lib/freebl/Makefile... The -mcrypto enables -mvsx 
and causes gcc to emit instructions the target CPU may not support, 
that's why it should be removed. Luckily, we can make some assumptions 
that if ALTIVEC isn't supported, VSX and Crypto functions arent either 
since they're introduced in the same or later ISA revisions.

> https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1606689
>
> so we fix this problem once!
I'm not sure this can be done "cleanly" given how this is currently 
structured. I've added a comment in the bug. Not all 64bit PPC 
processors have Altivec (e5500 does not). Plus this goes a bit beyond 
that since the functions they're using require at least Power ISA 3.0. 
The source package should probably inherit CFLAGS instead of assuming it 
can define it given the complexities of PPC cpu tuning.
>
> Maybe we can live chat on BR IRC if you join it.
I'm idling there today
>
>
> Thanks for reviewing so in depth.
> Best regards

-- 
Vincent Fazio
Embedded Software Engineer - Linux
Extreme Engineering Solutions, Inc
http://www.xes-inc.com




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