Bug 673691

Created attachment 475964 [details]
/etc/sysconfig/alignment sample/default config

(In reply to comment #0)
> Created attachment 475963 [details]
> rc.sysinit patch to apply alignment fixup settings

I've marked this as patch now (it was an octet-stream) and did a little review. As this patch should conditionally be included in the .armv5tel release of initscripts, I do not think there is the need for the else-if-not-arm part.

You have added an extra grep to check if the variable is a number. rc.sysinit does not seem to care about bad formatted options/variables anywhere. I think the extra check is good, though also not complete (i.e. value 9 is undefined?). To keep the code simple, I would suggest to remove the check.


> Kernel's default behaviour is to ignore alignment errors.

Which setting is that in the config? I guess fix+warn, but it would be nice to have that confirmation from you.

Cheers,
Niels

The values are documented in the other attached file, in the comments. If you have a look there, the value I put in the attached file is 3 - fix+warn.

I'm not sure if multiple rc.sysinit scripts for arch dependance is a good idea. I think it'd be better if they were unified. There are unlikely to be THAT many arch specific things like this.

Regarding the check, I like the extra error checking just to make sure. However, there is another point to be made. I'm not sure if this is the case on all ARMv7 CPUs, but it is certainly the case on all Cortex A8 and A9 derived CPUs I have seen - and they automatically and transparently, silently fix alignment errors (AFAIK, the speed penalty is still there, but we get no say in the matter - changing the settings does nothing). Unless there is an exception among ARMv7 series, the chances are that this is irrelevant on ARMv7 and will also be on later CPUs. So I could be persuaded that the check should only cover ARMvX where X <= 6.

I'm not convinced the miniscule extra complexity and precedents for not error checking input elsewhere is a good reason to avoid using good practices in the future. By that reasoning we shouldn't fix bugs because there are already other bugs in the distro. :)

Why on earth isn't this a sysctl in the kernel, and therefore something that can be easily set in a distribution-neutral sysctl.conf file?

I completely agree that a sysctl would be far more sensible. Having said that, with so many things moving to /sys, when are we going to get sysctl.conf support for applying configuration to things under /sys ?

Meanwhile, something like the attached patch is likely to remain the only way to auto-apply this setting for the foreseeable future.

(In reply to comment #5)
> I completely agree that a sysctl would be far more sensible. Having said that,
> with so many things moving to /sys, when are we going to get sysctl.conf
> support for applying configuration to things under /sys ?

Huh? We already have that (and architecture-specific files in the package, to boot.)

Also, would the use of something like http://kojipkgs.fedoraproject.org/packages/prctl/1.5/2/src/ be appropriate?

I'm not sure prctl is quite what is needed here. Either way, this is an issue that needs to be addressed one way or the other. I provided a patch that works today, with today's kernel. If it is to be made into a sysctl, then that would need to be discussed upstream. Sure, I'd prefer it to be a simple setting in sysctl.conf (or the equivalent for /sys as opposed to /proc/sys, which to the best of my knowledge doesn't exist, but please correct me if I'm wrong). But that requires kernel changes, and this probably needs to be done before F16.

prctl is an already-existing interface for setting alignment behavior, that's why I asked.

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Would it be OK to have this re-opened against rawhide?

I'm still not sure why this can't just use the existing prctl alignment frobbing mechanisms.

Maybe it can, but I can'd find the prctl package anywhere. This lists it as orphaned: https://admin.fedoraproject.org/pkgdb/acls/name/prctl
The git link lists it as dead.

Can you provide an up to date link to the package/source?

http://kojipkgs.fedoraproject.org/packages/prctl/1.5/2/src/prctl-1.5-2.src.rpm

was the latest build. It's something that was only necessary on ia64, so it was dropped from Fedora a while back.