Peer Manager and GCC

RE: Peer Manager and GCC

RK — Thu, 21 Apr 2016 13:34:19 GMT

Which of the two edits is the current state? It's fixed in 11.0.0_89a8197 or it will be fixed in another release? Because someone with what looks like 11.0.0_89a8197 has just posted another thread saying it doesn't work .. here

devzone.nordicsemi.com/.../

RE: Peer Manager and GCC

Andrew — Tue, 22 Mar 2016 16:31:16 GMT

I have tested the new linker scripts included with the production release of SDK 11.0.0 and everything is working fine now.

While not the most painless SDK migration, the added and fixed features of Peer Manager are worth it!

RE: Peer Manager and GCC

Bartek — Thu, 18 Feb 2016 07:51:12 GMT

To fix FS_SECTION_VARS_COUNT returning 0 I changed linker file a little.

[...]
    .fs_data :
    {
        . = ALIGN(4);
        PROVIDE(__start_fs_data = .);
        KEEP(*(.fs_data))
        PROVIDE(__stop_fs_data = .);
        . = ALIGN(4);
        __data_end__ = .;
    }
[...]

RE: Peer Manager and GCC

Håkon Alseth — Mon, 01 Feb 2016 22:12:13 GMT

Great to hear Andrew. I'm sorry for the "all-in-one" workaround for the .ld file, I did not see any other "quickfix" at this moment. The official fixed .ld file (will be included in next SDK release) will be easier to read than mine :-) Cheers, Håkon

RE: Peer Manager and GCC

Andrew — Mon, 01 Feb 2016 17:59:33 GMT

This looks to be working correctly now. Will vote this for the answer. Big thanks to the Nordic crew for fixing this. Linker scripts are far outside of my expertise so I would have been stabbing in the dark on this one.

RE: Peer Manager and GCC

Andrew — Tue, 26 Jan 2016 18:11:11 GMT

Håkon, I am now getting a hardfault on boot after programming the board. Stepping through gets me again to fs_init but when FS_SECTION_VARS_GET(i) gets called, the start address returned is 0xfffc8000 with the end address set to 0x80000. The end address is correct but somehow the start address still isn't working out correctly.

RE: Peer Manager and GCC

gortok — Tue, 26 Jan 2016 02:06:36 GMT

@Andrew it's also in 10.0, which is a production SDK, so.

RE: Peer Manager and GCC

Andrew — Fri, 22 Jan 2016 17:39:13 GMT

I have spoken to Nordic support on this issue and without going into too much detail, there is not currently a way around this with GCC. They will continue to work through this issue. We should keep in mind that this is an experimental module that is also in an alpha SDK.

RE: Peer Manager and GCC

DeanOSLI — Fri, 22 Jan 2016 10:42:18 GMT

I am experiencing that exact same issue; hard reset no good, soft reset ok. PCA10040, SDK 11.0.0.2alpha. S132 2.0.0-7alpha

RE: Peer Manager and GCC

Andrew — Thu, 14 Jan 2016 18:14:48 GMT

Håkon,

Thank you again. I Verified this fixed the initial address problem however one problem still remains. On a hard reset or powered on with the switch on the DK, I get a hardfault traced from page_identify(). A soft reset does not cause this issue. I tried adding in some delays in main() but I get the same problem.

I am currently using a PCA10036 if that helps.

RE: Peer Manager and GCC

Håkon Alseth — Thu, 14 Jan 2016 14:56:20 GMT

Hi Andrew, I've edited my response for a proper workaround. I was able to connect and run the example properly now.

Cheers, Håkon

RE: Peer Manager and GCC

Andrew — Tue, 12 Jan 2016 18:05:36 GMT

Håkon,

Thank you for the reply. This fixes the Softdevice getting wiped out but I am still experiencing an issue during fs_init(). When setting the num_left variable with FS_SECTION_VARS_COUNT, it always returns 0. So when entering the do / while(--num_left > 0), it decrements the num_left and rolls over. I attempted to fix this by changing num_left from a uint32_t to an int32_t. This got me out of the do while loop, however it still looks like the wrong address is being assigned to p_config during FS_SECTION_VARS_GET().

If I allow the program to continue out of the do/while loop I run back into trouble when it moves on to static fds_init_opts_t pages_init(). Since the address is incorrect, it comes back as FDS_PAGE_UNDEFINED and when checked with page_is_empty(), it is looking at a page that is not empty and falls out of the switch statement.

RE: Peer Manager and GCC

Håkon Alseth — Tue, 12 Jan 2016 12:29:16 GMT

Hi,

EDIT : This shall be fixed from nRF5_SDK_11.0.0_89a8197 and upwards

Fix for nRF5_SDK_11 alpha:

Had to re-order our common linker file, and for now; everything is included into one .ld file, due to ordering of the .data/.fs_data/.bss sections for initialization.

ble_app_hrs_rscs_relay_gcc_nrf52.ld

sector_vars.h

Best regards, Håkon

RE: Peer Manager and GCC

Richard von Lehe — Fri, 08 Jan 2016 20:41:52 GMT

I've brought this up, but it hasn't been fixed yet. The first thing that needs to happen is to consolidate to only one SECTIONS definition between the project linker script and the common linker script (components/toolchain/gcc/nrf5x_common.ld. I've read that gcc/ld don't handle multiple SECTION definition. I did that and it avoided placing those 16 bytes at address 0x0, but it still didn't do the job right. If you look at the map file generated by IAR (not sure you have that available), you will see that fs_config gets placed in RAM and it's initial value gets copied from the .text section in flash. This isn't happening in the gcc version, so you'll see the fs_init call go haywire and eventually you'll hit an assert and restart ... over and over.

RE: Peer Manager and GCC

Andrew — Fri, 08 Jan 2016 20:28:51 GMT

Making a debug configuration within Eclipse with the GDB SEGGER J-Link Debugging does not keep the fs_config from writing into the softdevice. So while it does flash the application, it kills the softdevice too.

RE: Peer Manager and GCC

Richard von Lehe — Fri, 08 Jan 2016 20:23:22 GMT

I have found that the gcc linker script used to place fs_config is not set up properly. I assume you're using a softdevice. What I've found is that the SECTION defined in the projects' linker script (e.g. ble_app_hrs_rscs_relay/pca10036/s132/armgcc) creates a section located at 0x0, which conflicts with the softdevice. In fact, I am wondering how you put this image into flash. If I try to do it using nRFGo Studio, it fails saying that part of your application is overflowing into the softdevice region.