Hi Phileas,

On Sun, Feb 17, 2013 at 12:12 AM, Phileas Fogg [off-list ref] wrote:

I found new clues about the problem.

Normally the device tree memory segment is allocated at the top of the boot
memory region. The boot memory size on the PS3 console is 128MB.


root@ps3-linux:~# kexec -l loader.ps3
segment[0].mem:0x131d000 memsz:262144
segment[1].mem:0x135d000 memsz:36864
segment[2].mem:0x7fff000 memsz:4096

And the device tree is located at address 0x7fff000, it's the last page of
the boot memory.

I changed the kexec-tools and made it store the device tree just after the
purgatory code which is located at address 0x135d000. Like here:


root@ps3-linux:~# kexec -l loader.ps3
segment[0].mem:0x131d000 memsz:262144
segment[1].mem:0x135d000 memsz:36864
segment[2].mem:0x1366000 memsz:4096   <---- new address of device tree
segment

And now the sha256 verification is always successful for the FreeBSD loader
too.
But still no idea what actually corrupts the device tree segment when it's
located at the top of the boot memory region. And why it happens on Linux
3.7 and Linux 3.8 but not on Linux 3.3.8.

Have you looked at the actual data that ends up being written there?
It may give a clue...

Gr{oetje,eeting}s,

                        Geert

--
Geert Uytterhoeven -- There's lots of Linux beyond ia32 -- geert@linux-m68k.org

In personal conversations with technical people, I call myself a hacker. But
when I'm talking to journalists I just say "programmer" or something like that.
                                -- Linus Torvalds