[PATCH v3 0/3] can: rockchip_canfd: fix TX stalls and races

Cunhao Lu <[email protected]> Thu, 30 Jul 2026 21:48:37 +0800
Newsgroups org.kernel.vger.linux-can,org.infradead.lists.linux-arm-kernel,org.infradead.lists.linux-rockchip,org.kernel.vger.linux-kernel,org.kernel.vger.stable
Message-ID <[email protected]>
While running CAN traffic on an RK3588 system, the driver repeatedly
reported an inconsistent TX echo state:

  rockchip_canfd fea60000.can can0: rkcanfd_tx_tail_is_eff:
  echo_skb[0]=NULL tx_head=0x00060f7d tx_tail=0x00060f7c

The Rockchip CAN-FD driver completes transmissions by matching
self-received frames with entries in the echo skb ring. The warning above
is emitted when the driver sees a pending transmission but finds no skb in
the corresponding echo slot.

The immediate cause is a race between the transmit and completion paths.
The completion path removes an echo skb before advancing tx_tail, while
the transmit path reads tx_head, tx_tail and that echo slot without common
synchronization. It can therefore observe a partially updated state,
dereference an skb which has been queued for NAPI, or stop the TX queue
without a later completion to wake it.

Two additional TX stall paths were found. The transmit path submits a
frame and advances tx_head even if installing its echo skb fails. In
addition, the erratum 6 retry path selects tx_head, which denotes the next
free buffer with a two-entry FIFO, instead of retrying the outstanding
buffer at tx_tail.

Review also identified that the erratum 12 MODE/CMD/MODE sequence can be
interleaved between the transmit softirq and the RX interrupt retry path.
The interrupt can restore the default MODE before the softirq issues CMD,
bypassing the SPACE_RX_MODE workaround.

This series makes echo skb setup failure abort the transmission, retries
the correct hardware buffer, and uses a spinlock to serialize the TX head,
tail, echo ring and command register sequence.

The final series was tested on an RK3588 rev2.2 at 1 Mbit/s with 100,000
extended CAN frames. The run triggered 138 erratum 6 retries and completed
without drops, queue stalls or driver warnings. RK3588 does not enable
erratum 12, so this test does not exercise that hardware workaround.

---
Changes in v3:
- Make can_put_echo_skb() consume the skb on every error path and remove
  the Rockchip-specific -EINVAL free.
- Drop the redundant error message from rkcanfd_start_xmit().
- Link to v2:
  https://lore.kernel.org/linux-can/[email protected]

Changes in v2:
- Document that the TX lock also serializes the erratum 12 MODE/CMD/MODE
  sequence.
- Add the erratum 12 commit to the Fixes tags of patch 3.
- Add RK3588 extended-frame stress-test results.
- Link to v1:
  https://lore.kernel.org/linux-can/[email protected]

To: Marc Kleine-Budde <[email protected]>
To: Vincent Mailhol <[email protected]>
To: [email protected]
To: Heiko Stuebner <[email protected]>
Cc: [email protected]
Cc: [email protected]
Cc: [email protected]
Cc: [email protected]

---
Cunhao Lu (3):
      can: rockchip_canfd: prevent TX stall on echo skb failure
      can: rockchip_canfd: retry the outstanding TX buffer
      can: rockchip_canfd: serialize TX state and command writes

 drivers/net/can/dev/skb.c                      |  1 +
 drivers/net/can/rockchip/rockchip_canfd-core.c |  1 +
 drivers/net/can/rockchip/rockchip_canfd-rx.c   | 31 +++++++++++++++------
 drivers/net/can/rockchip/rockchip_canfd-tx.c   | 37 +++++++++++++++++++++-----
 drivers/net/can/rockchip/rockchip_canfd.h      |  4 ++-
 5 files changed, 58 insertions(+), 16 deletions(-)
---
base-commit: 11028ab62899e4191e074ee364c712b77823a9c4
change-id: 20260730-master-a1b54b3cf5a0

Best regards,
--  
Cunhao Lu <[email protected]>