Kevin D. Kissell wrote:
I think it's important to know whether it's U-Boot or Linux that's confused. As Thomas Bogendoerfer pointed out, it's not good practice to flip bits whose use is unknown to the kernel. If in fact the CPU in question does support IV, was correctly identified as such by U-Boot, but isn't recognized by the MIPS Linux kernel, then we ought to fix Linux to recognize the CPU. If it doesn't support IV, but U-Boot thought it did, then U-Boot is broken and ought to be fixed. If you you're stuck with a broken U-Boot for some reason, then there ought to be some platform-specific place to put a hack.
It seems the culprit is U-Boot/MIPS `qemu-mips' target. It apparently sets IV bit in its local initialization. u-boot/board/qemu-mips/lowlevel_init.S --------------------------------------- http://git.denx.de/?p=u-boot.git;a=blob;f=board/qemu-mips/lowlevel_init.S;hb=HEAD /* Memory sub-system initialization code */ #include <config.h> #include <asm/regdef.h> #include <asm/mipsregs.h> .text .set noreorder .set mips32 .globl lowlevel_init lowlevel_init: /* * Step 2) Establish Status Register * (set BEV, clear ERL, clear EXL, clear IE) */ li t1, 0x00400000 mtc0 t1, CP0_STATUS /* * Step 3) Establish CP0 Config0 * (set K0=3) */ li t1, 0x00000003 mtc0 t1, CP0_CONFIG /* * Step 7) Establish Cause * (set IV bit) */ li t1, 0x00800000 mtc0 t1, CP0_CAUSE /* Establish Wired (and Random) */ mtc0 zero, CP0_WIRED nop jr ra nop --->8--->8--->8--->8--- On the other hand, a normal U-Boot/MIPS startup routine doesn't set any CP0.CAUSE bits; it just clears all bits right after system reset. u-boot/cpu/mips/start.S ------------------------ http://git.denx.de/?p=u-boot.git;a=blob;f=cpu/mips/start.S;hb=HEAD (snipped) /* Clear watch registers. */ mtc0 zero, CP0_WATCHLO mtc0 zero, CP0_WATCHHI /* WP(Watch Pending), SW0/1 should be cleared. */ mtc0 zero, CP0_CAUSE setup_c0_status_reset /* Init Timer */ mtc0 zero, CP0_COUNT mtc0 zero, CP0_COMPARE (snipped) So this issue only happens on U-Boot/MIPS `qemu-mips' target, I think. Shinya