How to trap unaligned memory access?

c linux arm memory-alignment
lvella picture lvella · May 14, 2013 · Viewed 13k times · Source

I am working on a pet open-source project that implements some stream cipher algorithms and I am having trouble with a bug triggered only when I run it on an ARM processor. I have even tried running the ARM binary in x86 under qemu, but the bug isn't triggered there.

The specifics mechanisms of the bug remains elusive, but my best shot is to believe that it is caused by unaligned memory access attempt made in my program, that is fulfilled by qemu, but silently ignored by the real ARM processor in my development board.

So, since the problem is showing to be very hard to diagnose, I would like to know if there is any tool that I could use to trap unaligned memory access made by my running program, so that I can see exactly where the problem happens.

I could also use some way of enabling, on my ARM development board, some signal (SIGBUS, maybe?) to be issued if the process violates memory alignment restrictions, like we get SIGSEGV when accessing unmapped memory address. It is running Linux 2.6.32.

Answer

Nico Erfurth picture Nico Erfurth · May 14, 2013

Linux can do the fixup for you or warn about the access.

You can enable the behavior in /proc/cpu/alignment, see http://www.mjmwired.net/kernel/Documentation/arm/mem_alignment for an explanation of the different values.

0 - Do nothing (default behavior)
1 - Warning in kernel-log with PC and Memory-Address printed.
2 - Fixup error
3 - Warn and Fixup
4 - Send a SIGBUS to the process
5 - Send SIGBUS and output Warning

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