| The PCI Express Advanced Error Reporting Driver Guide HOWTO |
| T. Long Nguyen <tom.l.nguyen@intel.com> |
| Yanmin Zhang <yanmin.zhang@intel.com> |
| 07/29/2006 |
| |
| |
| 1. Overview |
| |
| 1.1 About this guide |
| |
| This guide describes the basics of the PCI Express Advanced Error |
| Reporting (AER) driver and provides information on how to use it, as |
| well as how to enable the drivers of endpoint devices to conform with |
| PCI Express AER driver. |
| |
| 1.2 Copyright © Intel Corporation 2006. |
| |
| 1.3 What is the PCI Express AER Driver? |
| |
| PCI Express error signaling can occur on the PCI Express link itself |
| or on behalf of transactions initiated on the link. PCI Express |
| defines two error reporting paradigms: the baseline capability and |
| the Advanced Error Reporting capability. The baseline capability is |
| required of all PCI Express components providing a minimum defined |
| set of error reporting requirements. Advanced Error Reporting |
| capability is implemented with a PCI Express advanced error reporting |
| extended capability structure providing more robust error reporting. |
| |
| The PCI Express AER driver provides the infrastructure to support PCI |
| Express Advanced Error Reporting capability. The PCI Express AER |
| driver provides three basic functions: |
| |
| - Gathers the comprehensive error information if errors occurred. |
| - Reports error to the users. |
| - Performs error recovery actions. |
| |
| AER driver only attaches root ports which support PCI-Express AER |
| capability. |
| |
| |
| 2. User Guide |
| |
| 2.1 Include the PCI Express AER Root Driver into the Linux Kernel |
| |
| The PCI Express AER Root driver is a Root Port service driver attached |
| to the PCI Express Port Bus driver. If a user wants to use it, the driver |
| has to be compiled. Option CONFIG_PCIEAER supports this capability. It |
| depends on CONFIG_PCIEPORTBUS, so pls. set CONFIG_PCIEPORTBUS=y and |
| CONFIG_PCIEAER = y. |
| |
| 2.2 Load PCI Express AER Root Driver |
| There is a case where a system has AER support in BIOS. Enabling the AER |
| Root driver and having AER support in BIOS may result unpredictable |
| behavior. To avoid this conflict, a successful load of the AER Root driver |
| requires ACPI _OSC support in the BIOS to allow the AER Root driver to |
| request for native control of AER. See the PCI FW 3.0 Specification for |
| details regarding OSC usage. Currently, lots of firmwares don't provide |
| _OSC support while they use PCI Express. To support such firmwares, |
| forceload, a parameter of type bool, could enable AER to continue to |
| be initiated although firmwares have no _OSC support. To enable the |
| walkaround, pls. add aerdriver.forceload=y to kernel boot parameter line |
| when booting kernel. Note that forceload=n by default. |
| |
| nosourceid, another parameter of type bool, can be used when broken |
| hardware (mostly chipsets) has root ports that cannot obtain the reporting |
| source ID. nosourceid=n by default. |
| |
| 2.3 AER error output |
| When a PCI-E AER error is captured, an error message will be outputed to |
| console. If it's a correctable error, it is outputed as a warning. |
| Otherwise, it is printed as an error. So users could choose different |
| log level to filter out correctable error messages. |
| |
| Below shows an example: |
| 0000:50:00.0: PCIe Bus Error: severity=Uncorrected (Fatal), type=Transaction Layer, id=0500(Requester ID) |
| 0000:50:00.0: device [8086:0329] error status/mask=00100000/00000000 |
| 0000:50:00.0: [20] Unsupported Request (First) |
| 0000:50:00.0: TLP Header: 04000001 00200a03 05010000 00050100 |
| |
| In the example, 'Requester ID' means the ID of the device who sends |
| the error message to root port. Pls. refer to pci express specs for |
| other fields. |
| |
| |
| 3. Developer Guide |
| |
| To enable AER aware support requires a software driver to configure |
| the AER capability structure within its device and to provide callbacks. |
| |
| To support AER better, developers need understand how AER does work |
| firstly. |
| |
| PCI Express errors are classified into two types: correctable errors |
| and uncorrectable errors. This classification is based on the impacts |
| of those errors, which may result in degraded performance or function |
| failure. |
| |
| Correctable errors pose no impacts on the functionality of the |
| interface. The PCI Express protocol can recover without any software |
| intervention or any loss of data. These errors are detected and |
| corrected by hardware. Unlike correctable errors, uncorrectable |
| errors impact functionality of the interface. Uncorrectable errors |
| can cause a particular transaction or a particular PCI Express link |
| to be unreliable. Depending on those error conditions, uncorrectable |
| errors are further classified into non-fatal errors and fatal errors. |
| Non-fatal errors cause the particular transaction to be unreliable, |
| but the PCI Express link itself is fully functional. Fatal errors, on |
| the other hand, cause the link to be unreliable. |
| |
| When AER is enabled, a PCI Express device will automatically send an |
| error message to the PCIE root port above it when the device captures |
| an error. The Root Port, upon receiving an error reporting message, |
| internally processes and logs the error message in its PCI Express |
| capability structure. Error information being logged includes storing |
| the error reporting agent's requestor ID into the Error Source |
| Identification Registers and setting the error bits of the Root Error |
| Status Register accordingly. If AER error reporting is enabled in Root |
| Error Command Register, the Root Port generates an interrupt if an |
| error is detected. |
| |
| Note that the errors as described above are related to the PCI Express |
| hierarchy and links. These errors do not include any device specific |
| errors because device specific errors will still get sent directly to |
| the device driver. |
| |
| 3.1 Configure the AER capability structure |
| |
| AER aware drivers of PCI Express component need change the device |
| control registers to enable AER. They also could change AER registers, |
| including mask and severity registers. Helper function |
| pci_enable_pcie_error_reporting could be used to enable AER. See |
| section 3.3. |
| |
| 3.2. Provide callbacks |
| |
| 3.2.1 callback reset_link to reset pci express link |
| |
| This callback is used to reset the pci express physical link when a |
| fatal error happens. The root port aer service driver provides a |
| default reset_link function, but different upstream ports might |
| have different specifications to reset pci express link, so all |
| upstream ports should provide their own reset_link functions. |
| |
| In struct pcie_port_service_driver, a new pointer, reset_link, is |
| added. |
| |
| pci_ers_result_t (*reset_link) (struct pci_dev *dev); |
| |
| Section 3.2.2.2 provides more detailed info on when to call |
| reset_link. |
| |
| 3.2.2 PCI error-recovery callbacks |
| |
| The PCI Express AER Root driver uses error callbacks to coordinate |
| with downstream device drivers associated with a hierarchy in question |
| when performing error recovery actions. |
| |
| Data struct pci_driver has a pointer, err_handler, to point to |
| pci_error_handlers who consists of a couple of callback function |
| pointers. AER driver follows the rules defined in |
| pci-error-recovery.txt except pci express specific parts (e.g. |
| reset_link). Pls. refer to pci-error-recovery.txt for detailed |
| definitions of the callbacks. |
| |
| Below sections specify when to call the error callback functions. |
| |
| 3.2.2.1 Correctable errors |
| |
| Correctable errors pose no impacts on the functionality of |
| the interface. The PCI Express protocol can recover without any |
| software intervention or any loss of data. These errors do not |
| require any recovery actions. The AER driver clears the device's |
| correctable error status register accordingly and logs these errors. |
| |
| 3.2.2.2 Non-correctable (non-fatal and fatal) errors |
| |
| If an error message indicates a non-fatal error, performing link reset |
| at upstream is not required. The AER driver calls error_detected(dev, |
| pci_channel_io_normal) to all drivers associated within a hierarchy in |
| question. for example, |
| EndPoint<==>DownstreamPort B<==>UpstreamPort A<==>RootPort. |
| If Upstream port A captures an AER error, the hierarchy consists of |
| Downstream port B and EndPoint. |
| |
| A driver may return PCI_ERS_RESULT_CAN_RECOVER, |
| PCI_ERS_RESULT_DISCONNECT, or PCI_ERS_RESULT_NEED_RESET, depending on |
| whether it can recover or the AER driver calls mmio_enabled as next. |
| |
| If an error message indicates a fatal error, kernel will broadcast |
| error_detected(dev, pci_channel_io_frozen) to all drivers within |
| a hierarchy in question. Then, performing link reset at upstream is |
| necessary. As different kinds of devices might use different approaches |
| to reset link, AER port service driver is required to provide the |
| function to reset link. Firstly, kernel looks for if the upstream |
| component has an aer driver. If it has, kernel uses the reset_link |
| callback of the aer driver. If the upstream component has no aer driver |
| and the port is downstream port, we will use the aer driver of the |
| root port who reports the AER error. As for upstream ports, |
| they should provide their own aer service drivers with reset_link |
| function. If error_detected returns PCI_ERS_RESULT_CAN_RECOVER and |
| reset_link returns PCI_ERS_RESULT_RECOVERED, the error handling goes |
| to mmio_enabled. |
| |
| 3.3 helper functions |
| |
| 3.3.1 int pci_enable_pcie_error_reporting(struct pci_dev *dev); |
| pci_enable_pcie_error_reporting enables the device to send error |
| messages to root port when an error is detected. Note that devices |
| don't enable the error reporting by default, so device drivers need |
| call this function to enable it. |
| |
| 3.3.2 int pci_disable_pcie_error_reporting(struct pci_dev *dev); |
| pci_disable_pcie_error_reporting disables the device to send error |
| messages to root port when an error is detected. |
| |
| 3.3.3 int pci_cleanup_aer_uncorrect_error_status(struct pci_dev *dev); |
| pci_cleanup_aer_uncorrect_error_status cleanups the uncorrectable |
| error status register. |
| |
| 3.4 Frequent Asked Questions |
| |
| Q: What happens if a PCI Express device driver does not provide an |
| error recovery handler (pci_driver->err_handler is equal to NULL)? |
| |
| A: The devices attached with the driver won't be recovered. If the |
| error is fatal, kernel will print out warning messages. Please refer |
| to section 3 for more information. |
| |
| Q: What happens if an upstream port service driver does not provide |
| callback reset_link? |
| |
| A: Fatal error recovery will fail if the errors are reported by the |
| upstream ports who are attached by the service driver. |
| |
| Q: How does this infrastructure deal with driver that is not PCI |
| Express aware? |
| |
| A: This infrastructure calls the error callback functions of the |
| driver when an error happens. But if the driver is not aware of |
| PCI Express, the device might not report its own errors to root |
| port. |
| |
| Q: What modifications will that driver need to make it compatible |
| with the PCI Express AER Root driver? |
| |
| A: It could call the helper functions to enable AER in devices and |
| cleanup uncorrectable status register. Pls. refer to section 3.3. |
| |
| |
| 4. Software error injection |
| |
| Debugging PCIE AER error recovery code is quite difficult because it |
| is hard to trigger real hardware errors. Software based error |
| injection can be used to fake various kinds of PCIE errors. |
| |
| First you should enable PCIE AER software error injection in kernel |
| configuration, that is, following item should be in your .config. |
| |
| CONFIG_PCIEAER_INJECT=y or CONFIG_PCIEAER_INJECT=m |
| |
| After reboot with new kernel or insert the module, a device file named |
| /dev/aer_inject should be created. |
| |
| Then, you need a user space tool named aer-inject, which can be gotten |
| from: |
| http://www.kernel.org/pub/linux/utils/pci/aer-inject/ |
| |
| More information about aer-inject can be found in the document comes |
| with its source code. |