[syslinux] Enumeration of ISA serial ports inconsistent between Linux and Syslinux

Gene Cumm gene.cumm at gmail.com
Sun Oct 9 06:21:37 PDT 2016


On Sun, Oct 9, 2016 at 8:49 AM, Gene Cumm <gene.cumm at gmail.com> wrote:
> On Sun, Oct 9, 2016 at 7:25 AM, Oliver Mangold via Syslinux
> <syslinux at zytor.com> wrote:
>> Hi,
>>
>> I would like to point out an issue with the enumeration of ISA serial
>> devices in Syslinux. If I interpret the snippet below correctly, Syslinux
>> looks up the device order with the BIOS, while Linux uses the fixed order
>> 3F8,2F8,3E8,2E8.
>>
>> Note that this inconsistency is a real problem, as some motherboards (like
>> e.g. a Supermicro X10DRi with default BIOS settings) have a different order
>> stored in BIOS:
>>
>> ---
>> # hexdump -s 0x400 -n 8 /dev/mem
>> 0000400 02f8 03f8 0000 0000
>> ---
>>
>>
>> Best regards,
>>
>> Oliver
>>
>> --- /syslinux/core/include/bios.h ---
>> #define SERIAL_BASE     0x0400  /* Base address for 4 serial ports */
>> ...
>> static inline uint16_t get_serial_port(uint16_t port)
>> {
>>      /* Magic array in BIOS memory, contains four entries */
>>      const uint16_t * const serial_ports = (const uint16_t *)SERIAL_BASE;
>>
>>      /*
>>       * If port > 3 then the port is simply the I/O base address
>>       */
>>      if (port > 3)
>>          return port;
>>
>>      /* Get the I/O port from the BIOS */
>>      return serial_ports[port];
>> }
>> ---
>
> Excellent job digging up the differences.  Looks like the code comes
> from commit ID c4fa331 but is much older.  The code comes from 7916325
> which is derived from the ASM in beaaa4f.  It appears to me that it
> was used to check the presence of a serial port and it was assumed the
> order at that memory address would be consistent and either the proper
> value or 0.
>
> I'm trying to dig for some documentation like Ralph Brown's Interrupt
> list.  Have you checked for firmware updates?  Have you tried
> experimenting with redoing what serial port is assigned what IO base
> address to make it consistent between Syslinux and Linux?
>
> Alternatively, have you considered specifying the full IO address
> instead of the low number (like "0x3F8")?

RBIL MEMORY.LST release 61 starting at line 31:

--------S-M00400000--------------------------
MEM 0040h:0000h - BASE I/O ADDRESS OF FIRST SERIAL I/O PORT
Size:    WORD
Notes:    the BIOS sets this word to zero if is unable to find any serial ports
      at the addresses it is programmed to check at boot
    DOS and BIOS serial device numbers may be redefined by re-assigning
      these values of the base I/O addresses stored here



So the behavior of Syslinux makes sense since the sequence numbers can
be re-assigned by the firmware (in this case, the CSM of the EFI
firmware) by moving the values around.

My inclination would be to use the IO address instead of the sequence
number for your desired behavior (as I just suggested).  I'd still
consider checking for EFI firmware updates and perhaps reporting the
issue to the vendor (in this case, Supermicro).

HPA, any opinions?

-- 
-Gene


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