The following are the causes for alignment faults in DECnet:
- An unaligned structure.
- Comparison of unaligned data.
- Bit field access from unaligned address.
- DECnet fork blocks placed in unaligned addresses.
In most alignment fault hits, the faulty addresses generated
are caused by complex calculations or from some runtime values. In such cases,
we need to find the exact location where the unaligned address is generated and
fix the problem appropriately. We made use of the TR_PRINT macro to find the
exact location of alignment faults. Each case was treated separately and
analyzed before adopting the appropriate technique.
Note: Because DECnet is a networking
protocol, we had to take care not to modify the structures (or Protocol Data
Units (PDUs)) that are sent through the wire. Moreover, the structure offsets
which are accessed through symbols or constants in code (some bit fields
offsets in BLISS sources) are also not modified in consideration of code
stability.
Following are the methodologies used to resolve the alignment faults:
Structure Rearrangement
We had several structures that were unaligned. In one such
case most of the members were a combination of "length" (2 bytes or word) and "address"
(4 bytes or longword) and the arrangement was leading to subsequent address
fields placed in unaligned addresses. Hence the fields are rearranged such that
the address fields are aligned on longword boundaries. In such cases "fillers"
can also be added to make proper alignment (Structure Padding). In locations
where we modify the structures, we ensure that no structure members are
accessed through hard-coded definitions in source code.
Using Unions
DECnet stores its Node ID in a framework database called
IDNodeType. We store the low-order 4 bytes of Node ID in a longword and access
them. But, in some runtime allocations, the node ID is placed in a word-aligned
address and accessing it results in alignment faults.
![](Fixing_Alignment_Faults_files/image005.gif)
Figure 1 -- Union with one longword and two words
So a new union is introduced through which the Node ID can be
accessed as a longword as well as two separate words as shown in figure 1. The
longword access causing the fault is then replaced with two word accesses,
thereby avoiding the alignment fault.
IDLow_u UNION;
IDLow LONGWORD UNSIGNED;
Low_s STRUCTURE;
IDLow_1 WORD UNSIGNED;
IDLow_2 WORD UNSIGNED;
END IDLow_s;
END IDLow_u;
Bit Field Access to get the Structure Fields
While extracting the network service access point (NSAP)
length from the routing PDUs we always ended up in an alignment fault due to
the following:
source_nsap = pdu [pdu$b_iso_address_part];
source_nsap_length =..source_nsap; ! - Alignment fault
In the second line for fetching a single byte we were making
the compiler fetch 4 bytes (ld4 instruction) from an unaligned address and then
used just one byte from it resulting in an alignment fault. Hence, using
bit-field access, the fault is avoided. Here, the complier generates an ld1
instruction for fetching a single byte. (This method relies on the way
instructions are generated by the complier, so behavior may vary based on the
BLISS compilers)
source_nsap_length =.source_nsap[0,0,8,0];
Comparison of Unaligned Data
![](Fixing_Alignment_Faults_files/image006.gif)
Figure 2 - Unaligned data
Comparison of the System ID which is 6 bytes is usually done
as a 4-byte and 2-byte comparison. In cases where the memory is allocated from
the pool and used at runtime, there is a chance of data storage as shown in the
Figure 23, i.e., the allocation starts from an unaligned offset. So the first
4-byte comparisonand the second 2-byte
comparison also cause an alignment fault. In order to avoid the alignment
fault, we can make a byte-by-byte comparison to avoidthe
alignment fault. Similarly, in cases where a word alignment is found to be
consistent, we adopted a word-by-word comparison to resolve the problem.
DECnet Fork Blocks placed in Unaligned Addresses
DECnet commands had a large number of alignment fault hits in
the NET$FORK routine. (NET$FORK is a DECnet wrapper over the VMS Fork routine,
EXE$FORK). The faulting address is found to be inside the VCRP structure
allocated from the non-paged pool. (VCRP is a data structure used by network
protocol stack to communicate between different layers). On formatting the
address we found that the hitting address lies inside the fork block (FKB),
which was placed from the start of the VCRP scratch area.
By default, VMS-FORK BLOCKS expects itself to be in a
quadword-aligned address. But, the start of the VCRP Scratch area is not a
quadword-aligned address and usage of the scratch area as a FORK BLOCK from
that address caused the alignment fault. So, in order to make the fork block
aligned, we moved the fork block to the nearest quadword-aligned offset from
the beginning of the VCRP scratch area. Because VCRP is a common data structure
used by other VMS networking products, we took extra care not to modify the
existing structures but to move the fork block to the nearest quadword-aligned
address without overflowing the scratch area. As a code fix, we generated a new
symbol that has as its value the nearest quadword-aligned offset from the VCRP
scratch address. The symbol VCRP$T_SCRATCH was the initial offset where the
fork block was copied, and it has as its value 468 dec/1D4 hex which is not a
quad word aligned offset. So a new structure is introduced for generating the
symbol with its value as 472 dec/1D8 hex that is quadword aligned.
Teaching the Compiler
- Align (n) Qualifier for BLISS
Align Qualifier tells the compiler that the data in the specified location is
unaligned so that it generates extra code to handle this condition. At
locations where the rearranging of structures or structure padding is not an
option we normally go with teaching the complier to align naturally.
![](Fixing_Alignment_Faults_files/image007.gif)
Figure 3 - Align Qualifier for BLISS
Here the ALIGN (0) qualifier tells the complier to
perform a byte access to any of the succeeding references to the tpdu variable.
The compiler generates more instructions to meet the byte access, which is one
of the main disadvantages of using this method.
- CH$MOVE - BLISS inbuilt for Byte-by-byte copy
Alignment faults due to bit accesses from
unaligned addresses were fixed by using CH$MOVE function. CH$MOVE does a
byte-by-byte copy to move the appropriate number of bytes from the unaligned
address to a local variable. It then uses that variable for accessing the
required bits, thereby avoiding the faults. A drawback is allocating more
temporary storage. Adding Align (n) is more appropriate if the number of hits
is less.
- BIND "Type Field" with Align (n) qualifier for BLISS
The operation of associating an address with a name is called binding. Complex
references causing the alignment faults can be replaced by bind variables
locally and an align (n) qualifier can be added to avoid the alignment fault.
- Set_registers unaligned/ Set_registers aligned Qualifier for Macro32
"Set_registers unaligned/ Set_registers aligned" are the counterparts for Align
qualifier in Macro32. For example,
![](Fixing_Alignment_Faults_files/image008.gif)
Figure 4 - Alignment Qualifier for Macro32
The content of R3 is an unaligned address and trying to
access a longword from it generates an alignment fault. So the ".set_registers
unaligned" directive is added to inform the complier that the content of
register is unaligned. After accessing R3 the register is marked as an aligned
one using the ".set_registers aligned" directive. This has to be
reverted to "aligned" so that complier will not treat the register contents as
unaligned for the rest of its access.
__unaligned |
Directive used in C, indicates to the compiler that the data pointed to is not properly aligned |
#pragma |
nomember_alignment & member_alignment, for C structure padding |
.align |
Directive used in Macro32 |
Basealign |
Directive used in SDL files |
Figure 5 -- Other Compiler Directives
|