Re: [Xen-devel] Xen ARM - Exposing a PL011 to the guest

[Bhupinder Thakur <bhupinder.thakur@xxxxxxxxxx>]

Hi,

>> Hi,
>>
>> I have done the changes for emulating pl011 in Xen. Currently, I have
>> verified the emulation code by manually reading/writing data to
>> /dev/ttyAMA0 which is the device file for pl011 device. The data is
>> flowing fine between xenconsoled and the guest domain.
>>
>> As a next step, I wanted to use /dev/ttyAMA0 as a console.
>>
>> For that I tried adding console=ttyAMA0 instead of console=hvc0 in the
>> "extra" directive in the domU configuration file. However, I do not
>> see the output on the console once I attached the console using "xl
>> console <domain_name>". I tried using "xl console -t serial
>> <domain_name>" also but that shows the tty1 console and not the
>> ttyAMA0 one.
>
> I would try to verify that when Linux uses the pl011 as a console (as
> opposed to just writing some characters into /dev/ttyAMA0), that it
> doesn't error out somewhere.  So like Stefano suggests, make sure you
> check the guest kernel log after boot (assuming you can SSH or something
> into the box) and look at 'dmesg' to see if the pl011 driver failed.
>
> You could also try adding some log info in you Xen pl011 emulation code
> to see if the guest kernel driver prods the device in the sequence you
> expect, based on looking at the linux driver for the pl011.

I tested with the following changes:

1. Compiled out CONFIG_HVC_XEN
2. Specified "console=ttyAMA0" in the guest configuration

With some more changes/fixes, the guest console is working partially
over ttyAMA0. I can see the guest boot prints on the console. However,
the prints stop just towards the end when the init scripts are
executed.

So it seems that during boot, initially ttyAMA0 is used as a
write-only port, where the console driver keeps writing the output to
the port. Till this point, only tx has been enabled on ttyAMA0 (driver
probe() is called at this point). No irq/rx has been enabled yet. Just
as the init scripts are executed, the irq/rx is also enabled on
ttyAMA0 (driver startup() is called at this time which enables rx and
registers IRQ) and then the boot prints stop.

Another observation is that unless you compile out HVC_XEN support,
the hvc0 console also keeps receiving the data even if the
console=ttyAMA0.

Regards,
Bhupinder

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