[hipl-dev] Re: [Branch ~hipl-core/hipl/trunk] Rev 6412: Fixed a checksumming issue

  • From: Diego Biurrun <diego@xxxxxxxxxx>
  • To: hipl-dev@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
  • Date: Sat, 01 Jun 2013 18:48:56 +0200

On 2013-06-01 17:43, Miika Komu wrote:
Hi,

On 05/31/2013 06:58 PM, Diego Biurrun wrote:
On 2013-05-31 09:43, Miika Komu wrote:
On 05/26/2013 07:51 PM, Diego Biurrun wrote:
On 2013-05-26 18:16, Diego Biurrun wrote:
On Sat, May 25, 2013 at 01:37:18PM -0000, noreply@xxxxxxxxxxxxx wrote:
--- libcore/gpl/checksum.c    2012-05-12 06:54:33 +0000
+++ libcore/gpl/checksum.c    2013-05-25 13:36:48 +0000
@@ -228,7 +228,7 @@
      uint16_t               checksum = 0;
      unsigned long          sum      = 0;
      int                    count    = 0, length = 0;
-    unsigned short        *p        = NULL; /* 16-bit */
+    static unsigned short  *p       = NULL; /* 16-bit */
      struct pseudo_header   pseudoh  = { { 0 } };
      struct pseudo_header6  pseudoh6 = { { 0 } };
      uint32_t               src_network, dst_network;

I think this makes the situation worse, not better.  This code is
broken and now you rely on some gcc optimization (or lack thereof)
to hide the fact.  Have you verified this even works with more than
one gcc version (not to mention other compilers)?
Since the bug appears with 32 and 64 bit platforms, one needs to find
out why different checksums are generated in the first place.  Some
parts hip_checksum_packet() must have hidden assumptions about pointer
or integer type sizes.  Also note the rampant casting that is used to
paper over design issues.

My money is on the pointer dereferences

         sum   += *p++;
         count -= 2;

should depend on the size of the pointer, which can be 32 or 64 bits,
so count cannot be decremented by the fixed size of '2', which is only
correct for 32 bits.

Hmmm, no, that analysis is not correct.  The decrement should work.

I suggest starting to debug this by getting rid of all the short and
long integer types used in that file and replace them by POSIX types
like uint16_t that have guaranteed sizes.

I tried this, but it didn't help, so the problem originates from gcc
optimizations.

No, the problem is in the code, not in gcc.

the code works if I disable gcc optimizations. If you find it more
suitable, I can replace the static variable by adding
__attribute__((optimize("O0"))) around the function?

That would be better as it makes your intention much more explicit. Normally static variables are thought of as values that don't live on the stack and survive function calls. It's absolutely not obvious that here the "static" keyword is (mis)used to trick gcc into turning off optimizations, which then magically fixes a checksum mismatch bug.

Why not commit your changes or send as a patch?

What do you mean?

Maybe I misunderstood, but it sounded as if you had (partially) converted that file to fixed-size integer types. If you did, then I think that would be worth committing, independent of whether or not it fixes the bug.

Also, might there be a problem with struct padding?

Possibly, any concrete suggestions what to try and test?

You could try to see what happens if you mark the structs in checksum.c as attribute(packed). I would guess that currently all the members are aligned to int boundaries.

P.S.: Have you tried asking Boeing to relicense their code for us?

I think we don't need an Aalto/RWTH-specific copyright file. We could
just add a new file (e.g. hip_checksum.c), copy the BSD/MIT
boilerplate from Boeing along with the function to the new
file.

Yes. My point is: What code from Boeing remains and have you asked them to relicense it to MIT? If they did relicense, then IIUC that would eliminate most of the GPL code in HIPL, right?

Diego

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