[Bug 1860053] Re: Possible lack of precision when calling clock_gettime via vDSO on user mode ppc64le

[Fabiano Rosas]

Since there is no vdso, the Go code goes into the syscall fallback:

MOVD    runtime·vdsoClockgettimeSym(SB), R12    // Check for VDSO availability
CMP     R12, R0
BEQ     fallback
(...)
fallback:
        ADD     $32, R1, R4
        SYSCALL $SYS_clock_gettime
        MOVD    32(R1), R3
        MOVD    48(R1), R5
        JMP     finish

But upon inspection, it seems the offset while loading R5 is not
correct:

in QEMU's clock_gettime implementation: 
(gdb) p/x *host_ts
$8 = {tv_sec = 0x9225f, tv_nsec = 0x375f74ee}

in the Go runtime:
(gdb) p/x *($r1 + 48)
$6 = 0x388c8
(gdb) p/x *($r1 + 40)
$7 = 0x375f74ee

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https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/1860053

Title:
  Possible lack of precision when calling clock_gettime via vDSO on user
  mode ppc64le

Status in QEMU:
  New

Bug description:
  Occurs on QEMU v4.2.0 run on docker (via the qemu-user-static:v4.2.0-2
  image) on an AMD64 Ubuntu 18.04.3 LTS machine provided by travis-
  ci.org.

  From golang's https://github.com/golang/go/issues/36592:

  It was discovered that golang's time.NewTicker() and time.Sleep()
  malfunction when a compiled application was run via QEMU's ppc64le
  emulator in user mode.

  The methods did not malfunction on actual PowerPC hardware or when the
  same golang application was compiled for golang's arm, arm64 or 386
  targets and was run via user mode QEMU on the same system.

  Curiously, the methods also worked when the program was compiled under
  go 1.11, but do malfunction in go 1.12 and 1.13.

  It was identified the change in behaviour was most likely attributable to 
golang switching to using vSDO for calling clock_gettime() on PowerPC 64 
architectures in 1.12. I.E:
  https://github.com/golang/go/commit/dbd8af74723d2c98cbdcc70f7e2801f69b57ac5b

  We therefore suspect there may be a bug in QEMU's user-mode emulation
  of ppc64le as relates to vDSO calls to clock_gettime().

  The nature of the malfunction of time.NewTicker() and time.Sleep() is
  such that sleeps or ticks with a granularity of less than one second
  do not appear to be possible (they all revert to 1 second
  sleeps/ticks). Could it be that the nanoseconds field of
  clock_gettime() is getting lost in the vDSO version but not in the
  syscall? Or some other issue calling these methods via vDSO?

  Thanks in advance.

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