[PATCH] kdb: Handle LF in the command parser

From: Douglas Anderson
Date: Wed Jun 28 2023 - 15:58:24 EST


The main kdb command parser only handles CR (ASCII 13 AKA '\r') today,
but not LF (ASCII 10 AKA '\n'). That means that the kdb command parser
can handle terminals that send just CR or that send CR+LF but can't
handle terminals that send just LF.

The fact that kdb didn't handle LF in the command parser tripped up a
tool I tried to use with it. Specifically, I was trying to send a
command to my device to resume it from kdb using a ChromeOS tool like:
dut-control cpu_uart_cmd:"g"
That tool only terminates lines with LF, not CR+LF.

Arguably the ChromeOS tool should be fixed. After all, officially kdb
seems to be designed such that CR+LF is the official line ending
transmitted over the wire and that internally a line ending is just
'\n' (LF). Some evidence:
* uart_poll_put_char(), which is used by kdb, notices a '\n' and
converts it to '\r\n'.
* kdb functions specifically use '\r' to get a carriage return without
a newline. You can see this in the pager where kdb will write a '\r'
and then write over the pager prompt.

However, all that being said there's no real harm in accepting LF as a
command terminator in the kdb parser and doing so seems like it would
improve compatibility. After this, I'd expect that things would work
OK-ish with a remote terminal that used any of CR, CR+LF, or LF as a
line ending. Someone using CR as a line ending might get some ugliness
where kdb wasn't able to overwrite the last line, but basic commands
would work. Someone using just LF as a line ending would probably also
work OK.

A few other notes:
- It can be noted that "bash" running on an "agetty" handles LF as a
line termination with no complaints.
- Historically, kdb's "pager" actually handled either CR or LF fine. A
very quick inspection would make one think that kdb's pager actually
could have paged down two lines instead of one for anyone using
CR+LF, but this is generally avoided because of kdb_input_flush().
- Conceivably one could argue that some of this special case logic
belongs in uart_poll_get_char() since uart_poll_put_char() handles
the '\n' => '\r\n' conversion. I would argue that perhaps we should
eventually do the opposite and move the '\n' => '\r\n' out of
uart_poll_put_char(). Having that conversion at such a low level
could interfere if we ever want to transfer binary data. In
addition, if we truly made uart_poll_get_char() the inverse of
uart_poll_put_char() it would convert back to '\n' and (ironically)
kdb's parser currently only looks for '\r' to find the end of a
command.

Signed-off-by: Douglas Anderson <dianders@xxxxxxxxxxxx>
---

kernel/debug/kdb/kdb_io.c | 16 +++++++++++++++-
1 file changed, 15 insertions(+), 1 deletion(-)

diff --git a/kernel/debug/kdb/kdb_io.c b/kernel/debug/kdb/kdb_io.c
index 5c7e9ba7cd6b..813cb6cf72d6 100644
--- a/kernel/debug/kdb/kdb_io.c
+++ b/kernel/debug/kdb/kdb_io.c
@@ -131,6 +131,7 @@ char kdb_getchar(void)
int escape_delay = 0;
get_char_func *f, *f_prev = NULL;
int key;
+ static bool last_char_was_cr;

for (f = &kdb_poll_funcs[0]; ; ++f) {
if (*f == NULL) {
@@ -149,6 +150,18 @@ char kdb_getchar(void)
continue;
}

+ /*
+ * The caller expects that newlines are either CR or LF. However
+ * some terminals send _both_ CR and LF. Avoid having to handle
+ * this in the caller by stripping the LF if we saw a CR right
+ * before.
+ */
+ if (last_char_was_cr && key == '\n') {
+ last_char_was_cr = false;
+ continue;
+ }
+ last_char_was_cr = (key == '\r');
+
/*
* When the first character is received (or we get a change
* input source) we set ourselves up to handle an escape
@@ -244,7 +257,8 @@ static char *kdb_read(char *buffer, size_t bufsize)
*cp = tmp;
}
break;
- case 13: /* enter */
+ case 10: /* linefeed */
+ case 13: /* carriage return */
*lastchar++ = '\n';
*lastchar++ = '\0';
if (!KDB_STATE(KGDB_TRANS)) {
--
2.41.0.162.gfafddb0af9-goog