* Frans Klaver | 2014-09-17 12:28:12 [+0200]:

- Bone Black: Yocto poky, core-image-minimal
 Login, "less file" locks up, doesn't show anything. I can exit using
 Ctrl-C.

So I have the same with my and the serial-omap driver. No difference
here. The trace looks like this:
|           <idle>-0     [000] d.h.   444.393585: serial8250_handle_irq: iir cc lsr 61
|           <idle>-0     [000] d.h.   444.393605: serial8250_rx_chars: get 0d
received the enter key

|           <idle>-0     [000] d.h.   444.393609: serial8250_rx_chars: insert d lsr 61
|           <idle>-0     [000] d.h.   444.393614: uart_insert_char: 1
|           <idle>-0     [000] d.h.   444.393617: uart_insert_char: 2
|           <idle>-0     [000] dnh.   444.393636: serial8250_tx_chars: empty
|      kworker/0:2-753   [000] d...   444.393686: serial8250_start_tx: empty?1
|      kworker/0:2-753   [000] d.h.   444.393699: serial8250_handle_irq: iir c2 lsr 60
|      kworker/0:2-753   [000] d.h.   444.393705: serial8250_tx_chars: empty
|               sh-1042  [000] d...   444.393822: serial8250_start_tx: empty?1
|               sh-1042  [000] d.h.   444.393836: serial8250_handle_irq: iir c2 lsr 60
|               sh-1042  [000] d.h.   444.393842: serial8250_tx_chars: empty
|               sh-1042  [000] d...   444.393855: serial8250_start_tx: empty?0
|               sh-1042  [000] d.h.   444.393863: serial8250_handle_irq: iir c2 lsr 60
|               sh-1042  [000] d.h.   444.393867: serial8250_tx_chars: put 0d
|               sh-1042  [000] d.h.   444.393871: serial8250_tx_chars: put 0a

shell responded with "\r\n" which I see and then

|               sh-1042  [000] d.h.   444.394057: serial8250_handle_irq: iir c2 lsr 60
|               sh-1042  [000] d.h.   444.394065: serial8250_tx_chars: empty

nothing more. less isn't sending data for some reason. Exactly the same
thing happens in a Debian environment except that it continues:
?
|             bash-2468  [000] d.h.    99.657899: serial8250_tx_chars: put 0a
|             bash-2468  [000] d.h.    99.658089: serial8250_handle_irq: iir c2 lsr 60
|             bash-2468  [000] d.h.    99.658095: serial8250_tx_chars: empty
=>
|             less-2474  [000] d...    99.696038: serial8250_start_tx: empty?0
|             less-2474  [000] d.h.    99.696069: serial8250_handle_irq: iir c2 lsr 60
|             less-2474  [000] d.h.    99.696078: serial8250_tx_chars: put 1b
|             less-2474  [000] d.h.    99.696082: serial8250_tx_chars: put 5b
|             less-2474  [000] d.h.    99.696085: serial8250_tx_chars: put 3f
|             less-2474  [000] d.h.    99.696087: serial8250_tx_chars: put 31

It has to be something about the environment. Booting Debian and chroot
into this RFS and less works perfectly. But since it behaves like that
with both drivers, I guess the problem is somewhere else?

 vi runs normally, only occupies part of the total screen estate in
 minicom. After quitting, a weird character shows up (typically I see
 ? there), but minicom can use the rest of the screen estate again.
 If we disregard the odd character, this is much like the behavior we
 have on the omap-serial driver.
- Custom board: Yocto poky, custom image
 Login, "less file" locks up, showing only "?" in the top left corner
 of the screen. Can get out of there by having something dumped through
 /dev/kmsg.

I managed to run into something like that with vi on dra7 and with
little more patience on am335x as well by "vi *" and then ":n".

This gets fixed indeed by writing. Hours of debugging and a lot of hair
less later: the yocto RFS calls set_termios quite a lot. This includes
changing the baudrate (not by yocto but the driver sets it to 0 and then
to the requested one) and this seems to be responsible for the "bad
bytes". I haven't figured out yet I don't see this with omap-serial.
Even worse: If this (set_termios()) happens while the DMA is still
active then it might stall it. A write into the FIFO seems to fix it and
this is where your "echo >/dev/kmsg" fixes things.
If I delay the restore_registers part of set_termios() until TX-DMA is
complete then it seems that the TX-DMA stall does not tall anymore.

Having it summed up like this, I think we're back at ncurses and its
interaction with the serial driver.

Hope this helps. Thanks for your effort so far,
Frans

Sebastian