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Date:   Wed, 18 Nov 2020 16:38:07 +0100
From:   Andreas Kemnade <andreas@kemnade.info>
To:     Nishanth Menon <nm@ti.com>
Cc:     Mark Brown <broonie@kernel.org>,
        Liam Girdwood <lgirdwood@gmail.com>,
        <linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org>, <linux-omap@vger.kernel.org>,
        <linux-arm-kernel@lists.infradead.org>,
        <lkft-triage@lists.linaro.org>, <linux-pm@vger.kernel.org>,
        Naresh Kamboju <naresh.kamboju@linaro.org>,
        Arnd Bergmann <arnd@arndb.de>
Subject: Re: [PATCH] regulator: ti-abb: Fix array out of bound read access
 on the first transition
Message-ID: <20201118163807.3783192c@aktux>
In-Reply-To: <20201118145009.10492-1-nm@ti.com>
References: <20201118145009.10492-1-nm@ti.com>
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Hi,

On Wed, 18 Nov 2020 08:50:09 -0600
Nishanth Menon <nm@ti.com> wrote:

> At the start of driver initialization, we do not know what bias
> setting the bootloader has configured the system for and we only know
> for certain the very first time we do a transition.
> 
> However, since the initial value of the comparison index is -EINVAL,
> this negative value results in an array out of bound access on the
> very first transition.
> 
> Since we don't know what the setting is, we just set the bias
> configuration as there is nothing to compare against. This prevents
> the array out of bound access.
> 
> NOTE: Even though we could use a more relaxed check of "< 0" the only
> valid values(ignoring cosmic ray induced bitflips) are -EINVAL, 0+.
> 
> Fixes: 40b1936efebd ("regulator: Introduce TI Adaptive Body Bias(ABB) on-chip LDO driver")
> Link: https://lore.kernel.org/linux-mm/CA+G9fYuk4imvhyCN7D7T6PMDH6oNp6HDCRiTUKMQ6QXXjBa4ag@mail.gmail.com/
> Reported-by: Naresh Kamboju <naresh.kamboju@linaro.org>
> Reviewed-by: Arnd Bergmann <arnd@arndb.de>
> Signed-off-by: Nishanth Menon <nm@ti.com>
> ---
> 
> Mark,
> 
> I will leave it to your descretion if this needs to be tagged for
> stable or to drop the Fixes tag - Side effect, if this occurs, will be
> an unstable system very hard to track down - but typically occurring
> during system boot - Impacts systems: DM3/OMAP3,4,5,DRA7/AM5x.
> 
> I would categorize this as "This could be a problem..." problem..
> the bug is an out of bound read, and has been around since v3.11 and is
> not a catastrophic data corruption kind of issue.
> 
> Though theoretically, there is a possibility that the compare may
> pass and result in missing bias configuration(and resulting system
> will be unstable), I have'nt heard of actual report (but, it will be
> surprising if any actual instability was actually tracked down to this
> bug). Any ways, I had to go to git full history to pick the exact
> commit - I have left it in the patch.
> 
> 
Hmm so probably these boot problems which only occur when your debug
cable is not attached?

Is there any connection with commits like this:
ARM: dts: omap36xx: using OPP1G needs to control the abb_ldo

So would the potential problem be more probable by patches like the
that one mentioned above?

Regards,
Andreas