From: Martin Guy <martinwguy@gmail.com>
To: Richard Koch <n1gp@hotmail.com>
Cc: crossgcc@sourceware.org
Subject: Re: Compiler Memory Alignment Issue
Date: Fri, 03 Feb 2012 09:52:00 -0000 [thread overview]
Message-ID: <CAL4-wQoqnhnSFZ0NxJM6LHCTCOojGy2kfxTVMsVB6_8rK-xZTg@mail.gmail.com> (raw)
In-Reply-To: <SNT112-W20026C65DA2489BC8955CE87700@phx.gbl>
On 2 February 2012 19:15, Richard Koch <n1gp@hotmail.com> wrote:
> know that ptr is declared as a pointer to an integer and interpret "*(ptr + 1)"
> as adding 4 BYTES to ptr.
> unsigned char buffer[8], i;
> int *ptr = (int *) buffer;
>
> printf("size of int is: %d\n", sizeof(int));
> memset(buffer, 0xff, sizeof buffer);
>
> *(ptr + 1) = 0x1234;
>
> for (i=0; i<(sizeof(buffer) +1); i++)
> printf("buffer[%d]=%x\n", i, buffer[i]);
> }
>
>
> RESULTS WITH crosstool-linux-gnueabi-2005q3-2:
>
> size of int is: 4
> buffer[0]=ff
> buffer[1]=ff
> buffer[2]=ff
> buffer[3]=ff
> buffer[4]=34
> buffer[5]=12
> buffer[6]=0
> buffer[7]=0
> buffer[8]=0
>
> RESULTS WITH crosstools-ng:
>
> size of int is: 4
> buffer[0]=ff
> buffer[1]=34
> buffer[2]=12
> buffer[3]=0
> buffer[4]=0
> buffer[5]=ff
> buffer[6]=ff
> buffer[7]=ff
> buffer[8]=8
I can reproduce your first result with gcc.4,4 and your second result
with gcc-4.3 (plain native debian compilers), which corresponds to the
gcc version you are using in crosstool.
The problem is that your char buffer is not word-aligned, so you can't
poke ints into it with predictable results. On ARM a nonaligned word
access writes into *(int*)(char *)ptr & ~3) and the value it writes is
byte-rotated in such a way as to write the least significant byte into
*(char *)ptr.
It looks like, in your failing case, that the bottom two bits of the
address of buffer[0] are 1 and 1.
The results also depend on the setting of /pro/cpu/alignment. The
default value of 0 gives the above behaviour,
echo 4 > /proc/cpu/alignment
will cause a fatal signal on misaligned word accesses and
echo 2 > /proc/cpu/alignment
will trap the misaligned access in the kernel and do what you are
expecting (i386- and vax-like behaviour).
A more robust solution would be to declare
char buffer[8] __attribute__ ((aligned (sizeof(int))));
or
int buffer[2];
A further test you can run to verify whether it is the compiler bug
you suspect or an alignment issue is to disassemble the object code
with
arm-linux-gnueabi-objdump -d a.out | less
(or whatever your toolchain is called) to check whether it is adding
one or four to the pointer.
M
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next prev parent reply other threads:[~2012-02-03 9:52 UTC|newest]
Thread overview: 10+ messages / expand[flat|nested] mbox.gz Atom feed top
2012-02-02 18:15 Richard Koch
2012-02-02 23:09 ` Martin Guy
2012-02-02 23:26 ` Rod Nussbaumer
2012-02-03 9:52 ` Martin Guy [this message]
2012-02-03 10:16 ` Bob Dunlop
2012-02-03 13:21 ` Yann E. MORIN
2012-02-03 14:14 ` Johannes Stezenbach
2012-02-03 14:23 ` Yann E. MORIN
2012-02-03 20:41 ` Johannes Stezenbach
2012-02-03 15:13 ` Richard Koch
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