nRF54L15: fix the tickless idle hang and five more bring-up issues - #1
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…NTER read port_cmsis_systick.c: - grtc_cc_set() wrote CCH = 0. The SYSCOUNTER is 52 bits at 1 MHz and keeps running across soft resets, so it passes 2^32 about 71 minutes after power-on; from then on every compare lands in the past and never fires. The tick only survived while some other interrupt woke the CPU, and the first idle sleep after that never ended. Rebuild the high word from the live counter, carrying when the 32-bit target wrapped. - grtc_counter_get() read SYSCOUNTERL without checking validity. SYSCOUNTERH is latched by the read of SYSCOUNTERL and its reset value already has BUSY set, so re-read the pair until BUSY clears (as nrfx does). A junk read here fed the tick catch-up below. - The tick ISR catch-up had no bound: a bogus counter read stepped the tick by hours. Anything beyond a few seconds is treated as one tick and the tick base is re-anchored; genuine long sleeps are accounted in vPortSuppressTicksAndSleep. WInterrupts.c: - attachInterrupt() only ever used GPIOTE20, but nRF54L routes P0 to GPIOTE30 (4 channels) and P1 to GPIOTE20 (8 channels); P2 has no GPIOTE at all. Pick the instance by port, keep per-instance channel maps, serve both IRQ lines, and return 0 for P2 pins. Verified on an nRF54L15-DK with an SX1262 (Meshtastic): boots cold and warm, tick tracks wall clock, DIO1 interrupts on P0.00.
…product flash_nrf5x.c: wait_for_async_flash_op_completion() blocked on the completion semaphore with portMAX_DELAY. A lost NRF_EVT_FLASH_OPERATION_* event (seen on nRF54L15 during a BLE connection) parked the writing task forever and, with every task blocked, the tickless idle put the CPU to sleep until an arbitrary wake-up: the firmware froze, BLE included. Wait in bounded slices, drain sd_evt_get() from the waiting task so the completion cannot get stuck behind a task that is not running, hand other SoC events to a weak application hook, and report NRF_ERROR_TIMEOUT when nothing arrives. port_cmsis_systick.c: clamp xExpectedIdleTime before multiplying by the GRTC ticks per systick; with every task blocked the product wrapped and the wake-up compare landed anywhere.
… to LittleFS The page cache flushed every 256-byte LittleFS block as erase-then-program of its 4 KB page: 32 sd_flash_write() calls filling the page with 0xFF (the nRF54L RRAM has no erase, s145 has no sd_flash_page_erase) followed by the whole page again. A hang or reset between the two left the page at 0xFF; when the page was page 0 both LittleFS superblocks vanished and the next boot reformatted the filesystem (seen on an nRF54L15-DK: the node came back unconfigured with a new identity after an overnight freeze). Flush only the 128-byte chunks that differ from the flash, in place: the other blocks sharing the page are never rewritten, so an interrupted flush can only damage the chunk in flight, which is the power-loss model LittleFS is built for. A boot now costs 11 operations instead of 34 per page. Propagate failures instead of ignoring them: flash_cache_flush() returns false, flash_cache_write() -1 when the flush it forced failed, and the LittleFS prog/ sync callbacks return LFS_ERR_IO so the caller learns the write did not happen. Create the completion semaphore on first use (fal_erase() was the only place that did, and it no longer runs before every program). Re-issue BUSY 20 times 5 ms apart and a lost completion 3 times; any other SoftDevice error is final. Keep a flight recorder (flash_nrf5x_stats) of the SoftDevice flash operations: counts of issued, completed, self-drained, timed-out and failed operations, the last destination and the longest wait, and an in_flight flag, so a stuck firmware can be read from the debugger by symbol.
WFI completes on any enabled pending interrupt regardless of PRIMASK, so the idle sleep no longer depends on SEVONPEND and on the event latch being in the right state when the loop re-checks ISPR. Same pattern Zephyr uses on this part.
The tick used SYSCOUNTER[0], INTEN0 and GRTC_0_IRQn, which belong to domain 0, the FLPR's. The secure application core is domain 2 (GRTC_IRQ_GROUP in nrf54l15_interim.h), and the SoftDevice already uses group 3 for its own compares. Use the SYSCOUNTER index, INTEN group and IRQ of domain 2, and fail the build if the MDK's GRTC_IRQ_GROUP ever disagrees. This is a correctness fix on its own: it did not cure the idle hang seen on the nRF54L15-DK, whose cause was the GRTC sleep timing (next commit).
Nothing on this core calls nrfx_grtc_init(), so TIMEOUT and WAKETIME kept their reset values, 0 and 1: the SYSCOUNTER stopped the moment the CPU slept and had a single 32 kHz cycle to wake up before a compare. On the nRF54L15-DK the core hung in the tickless idle WFI with the SYSCOUNTER stopped, every 40 min to 3.5 h. In all five hangs caught live, a SoftDevice compare sat 1.5-2 of those cycles past the stop and never fired, and neither did the tick compare 19.5 ms later. Write the values of NRFX_GRTC_SLEEP_DEFAULT_CONFIG (TIMEOUT 5, WAKETIME 4), which is what Zephyr applies on this part. Do it outside the start path, like AUTOEN, since the GRTC survives soft resets.
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Included review availability: This review used your included allowance. Your plan provides up to 1 included review per hour; 0 remain after this review. 📝 WalkthroughWalkthroughThe changes scope GPIO interrupts by GPIOTE instance, update nRF54L FreeRTOS timing to use GRTC domain 2 and a 64-bit tick grid, and revise flash programming, cache flush, and filesystem error handling. They also connect intercepted RNG seed requests to the Bluefruit SOC task. ChangesGPIO Interrupt Handling
GRTC FreeRTOS Timing
nRF5 Flash I/O
Priority: ⬆️ High Estimated code review effort: 4 (Complex) | ~45 minutes Change: Bug fix Sequence Diagram(s)sequenceDiagram
participant InternalFileSystem
participant flash_nrf5x_flush
participant flash_cache_flush
participant fal_program
participant FlashCompletionEvent
InternalFileSystem->>flash_nrf5x_flush: Request flush
flash_nrf5x_flush->>flash_cache_flush: Flush cached page
flash_cache_flush->>fal_program: Program changed chunks
fal_program->>FlashCompletionEvent: Submit flash operation
FlashCompletionEvent-->>fal_program: Report completion
flash_cache_flush-->>flash_nrf5x_flush: Return flush status
flash_nrf5x_flush-->>InternalFileSystem: Return flush status
Suggested reviewers: Merge Risk: ⚪ Minimal · up to The nRF54L15 fixes cover GPIO interrupt routing, the GRTC tick and idle timing, and flash write reliability, and the earlier timing and flash-cache concerns appear resolved in the current code. No open defect blocks merging. Flash failure handling and tick backlog recovery have not been exercised on hardware, so field monitoring of those paths is still worthwhile. Security Architecture ReviewSecurity architecture risk: 🟡 Moderate · up to The changes improve recovery from hangs and flash failures, but a timed-out flash write can retain access to a cache buffer that later writes may modify. This leaves a persistent-data integrity risk during failure recovery. No remote exploit or privilege expansion was established. Retained concerns
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Inline comments:
Review comments at
@cores/nRF5/freertos/portable/CMSIS/nrf54l/port_cmsis_systick.c:
- Around line 81-83: Limit the maximum tickless-idle duration in the
`port_cmsis_systick` flow to the signed GRTC half-range, using `0x7FFFFFFF`
divided by `portNRF_GRTC_TICKS_PER_SYSTICK` for both the cap check and assigned
cap instead of `portNRF_GRTC_MAXTICKS`.
Review comments at @libraries/InternalFileSytem/src/flash/flash_cache.c:
- Line 62: Update flash_cache_write to stop immediately when the page-switch
call to flash_cache_flush fails, and preserve its existing successful-write
return behavior. In flash_cache_flush, invalidate cache_addr only after a
successful flush so the dirty page remains cached on failure; update its
declaration comment to document that behavior.
Review comments at @libraries/InternalFileSytem/src/flash/flash_nrf5x.c:
- Around line 119-122: Update the timeout handling in the write-completion wait
path so a timed-out accepted SoftDevice write remains outstanding and its
completion event is consumed before retrying through flash_words_write_retry or
starting another flash operation. Do not rely on clearing _sem before issuing a
write to distinguish stale completion events.
- Around line 105-116: Add a strong definition of flash_nrf5x_soc_event_hook and
route drained SoC events through the same RNG-request handler used by
adafruit_soc_task, so NRF_EVT_RAND_SEED_REQUEST is serviced before sd_evt_get
removes it from the pending queue.
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📒 Files selected for processing (9)
cores/nRF5/WInterrupts.ccores/nRF5/freertos/config/FreeRTOSConfig.hcores/nRF5/freertos/portable/CMSIS/nrf54l/port_cmsis_systick.ccores/nRF5/freertos/portable/CMSIS/nrf54l/portmacro_cmsis.hlibraries/InternalFileSytem/src/InternalFileSystem.cpplibraries/InternalFileSytem/src/flash/flash_cache.clibraries/InternalFileSytem/src/flash/flash_cache.hlibraries/InternalFileSytem/src/flash/flash_nrf5x.clibraries/InternalFileSytem/src/flash/flash_nrf5x.h
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grtc_cc_set() places a 32-bit target in the right 2^32 epoch of the 52-bit compare by carrying into the high word when the target wrapped, and it decides that from (int32_t)(val - lo) > 0. That only holds for targets less than 2^31 GRTC ticks ahead. The tickless idle allowed up to 2^32 ticks, about 71 min at 1 MHz, so with every task blocked forever a wrapped target further than ~35 min out kept the current high word, sat in the past, and the CPU slept until some other interrupt woke it. Cap the idle at 0x7FFFFFFF GRTC ticks instead of 0xFFFFFFFF.
When the flush forced by a page switch failed, flash_cache_flush() dropped the cached page and flash_cache_write() loaded the next one over it. That page held writes LittleFS had already been told were done, so they were lost, while the write that triggered the flush was cached anyway and could reach flash later despite having returned LFS_ERR_IO. Leave the page cached when its flush fails and return -1 before taking the new write, so the next flush (or sync) writes it again; on RRAM only the chunks that still differ are sent. With that, a failed write in the erase callback no longer stores its 0xFF, so the erase now reports LFS_ERR_IO like prog instead of claiming the block was erased.
While it waits for a flash completion, the InternalFS driver drains the SoC event queue itself and passes every non-flash event to flash_nrf5x_soc_event_hook(), which nothing defined. A seed request pulled out there was dropped and never reached adafruit_soc_task(), so sd_rand_seed_set() was not called. Give Bluefruit54Lib a weak default for the hook that seeds the RNG through the same function as the SOC task. It is weak so that an application that reads the SoC events itself (Meshtastic does) can still define its own without a duplicate symbol.
When the wait for a SoftDevice flash completion timed out, the write could still be running. Its completion then arrived later, as a give on the semaphore or as an event in the SoC queue, and the next write (the retry, or any later one) took it for its own and reported success while it was still being written. Count accepted operations and completions instead of taking the semaphore once per operation. The SoftDevice runs one operation at a time and reports them in order, so all accepted operations are finished once the counts match, and the last completion is the current write's. Before issuing, wait (with the same 2 s bound) for any operation left outstanding. If its completion still does not come, issue anyway: BUSY means it is still running and goes through the usual BUSY retries, which no longer wait again; acceptance means it finished and another reader of the SoC queue took its completion without passing it on, so it is written off and counted in flash_nrf5x_stats.written_off. The one case left is a completion counted in the instant between that last check and sd_flash_write(), after it had been missing for more than 2 s. It can end one wait early; the surplus count is then dropped.
After a completion was written off as lost, it could still arrive: the SoftDevice accepting the next write proves the earlier one finished, not that another reader consumed its completion. Counted late, it made the counts match while the new write was still running, so the driver returned success early. The cache could then load another page into the buffer the SoftDevice was still reading from, and write that data at the wrong address. Also require the destination to read back as the source before the wait for a write succeeds. The cache only programs chunks that differ from the flash, so a match means the SoftDevice has written them and is done reading the buffer. A stray completion can now only make the wait look again, never end it early. If every completion is in, the last one reported a failure and the data is not there, the write fails and is retried as before. The only write a match cannot vouch for is an erase chunk over flash that is already 0xFF; its source is a constant, so finishing it later cannot write anything else.
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Reviewed the GRTC tick, GPIOTE, InternalFS flash driver and SoftDevice RNG changes. Inline comments below.
Would address before merging:
grtc_cc_set()epoch handling (missing borrow, unchecked SYSCOUNTERH read). Moving the tick to 64-bit counter/compare values would fix both and remove the idle cap.- GPIOTE mask returned by
attachInterrupt()vs. SoftwareSerial's use ofNRF_GPIOTE. - Flash retry policy for SoftDevice-reported failures, and the sticky failed flush blocking format.
The rest are smaller: the 4 s tick re-anchor, GRTC sleep register write order, flash stats, dead code.
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Thanks for the thorough review. All 13 points hold, and I have fixes for them: the tick moves to 64-bit GRTC counter and compare values, SoftwareSerial picks the GPIOTE instance from the pin's port, the flash driver trims each write to the words that change and gets a per-chunk time budget with the retry policy you suggested, a failing page is dropped after a few flushes, and the RNG seed comes from CRACEN. Since the tick change reworks the idle-hang fix, the build is on a 24 h soak on the DK before I push. I'll reply to each comment then. |
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@caveman99 Thanks for the heads-up. Once #2 is in I'll rebase, drop my seed commit, and have the flash driver's hook hand the request to the SOC task's pending seed instead of seeding inline. |
Resolve the conflict with c3e503c in bluefruit.cpp: keep master's CRACEN-based seed_softdevice_rng() and drop this branch's copy of the FICR/SYSCOUNTER seed. flash_nrf5x_soc_event_hook() now marks the seed request pending and wakes the SOC task through SD_EVT_IRQn, so requests drained by the flash driver go through the same retry as the rest.
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Merged master into this branch (50cb3b8) to resolve the conflict with #2 in
This resolves the review comment on the predictable RNG seed (bluefruit.cpp:676). The other review comments are unaffected by the merge. |
grtc_cc_set() rebuilt the high word of a 32-bit target from the live counter. It only ever carried into the next epoch, never borrowed: a target slightly behind the counter when the low word had just wrapped (the tick ISR held off for more than a period by a SoftDevice interrupt) landed about 2^32 us, 71.6 min, ahead, and the tick stopped. Its SYSCOUNTERH read also ignored BUSY and OVERFLOW. Read the counter with nrfy_grtc_sys_counter_get(), which retries on both and reads this core's domain, and arm compares with the full value through nrfy_grtc_sys_counter_cc_set(). A target already in the past now fires at once; the spurious event that writing CCL before CCH can raise is dropped while the target is still ahead, as nrfx does. That removes the epoch reconstruction, the hand-rolled counter read and the 2^31 cap on the tickless idle. Ticks now stay on a grid (grtc_next_tick) instead of being re-armed one period after the ISR ran. A backlog beyond 4 s is no longer dropped by re-anchoring the tick base: it is caught up 4 s per interrupt and counted in grtc_tick_backlogs. The tickless idle wakes on the grid and never steps past the unblock tick; ticks beyond it are caught up by the tick interrupt. Write the sleep configuration the way nrfx_grtc_sleep_configure() does, with the SYSCOUNTER stopped, using NRFX_GRTC_SLEEP_DEFAULT_CONFIG instead of literal 5/4. The nrfx GRTC driver itself is not enabled in this core.
attachInterrupt() returns a channel mask of GPIOTE30 for P0 pins and of GPIOTE20 for P1 pins, but SoftwareSerial applied it to NRF_GPIOTE, which nrf54l_compat.h aliases to GPIOTE20. With the RX pin on P0, write() masked GPIOTE20 channel N instead of the RX channel: the RX edge interrupt kept firing during TX, and whatever P1 pin owned that channel was masked during every byte. Add digitalPinToGpiote() to WInterrupts, using the same pin mapping as attachInterrupt(), and have SoftwareSerial keep the instance its RX pin uses.
Write only the words of a chunk that differ from the flash, first to last. A chunk ending in words that already matched could otherwise read back equal while the SoftDevice still had those words to write and was still reading the buffer, so a late completion could end the wait before it was done and the cache could reload the buffer under it. A range already in place is now not written at all, which also covers erasing flash that is already 0xFF. Give each chunk a total budget of 2 s, every attempt and wait included, instead of 2 s per wait: with retries one failing chunk could hold the filesystem lock for about 10 s. Settling an operation left outstanding by a timeout may use up to 0.5 s of it. A failure reported by the SoftDevice (NRF_EVT_FLASH_OPERATION_ERROR, which it raises when it cannot fit the write around radio activity) is now retried like BUSY, up to MAX_RETRY times with a pause, instead of three times back to back, and it counts in flash_nrf5x_stats.errors. A page whose flush keeps failing is dropped after three failures in a row. Kept for ever, it refused every write to any other page, including the erases of InternalFS.format(), and its data does not survive a reboot anyway. Drop the NOR erase-then-program flush: the only flash_cache_t writes in place.
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@caveman99 Thanks for merging #2 in and reworking the hook. I've pushed the fixes for the other 12 comments on top of 50cb3b8 (f0da2b4, 67e6484, 1530bc4) and replied to each one inline. Before the push, these commits ran 22 h 37 min on the DK, with my CRACEN seed in place of #2: no reset, |
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Looking good, thanks. i am merging a few other minor things and will push a release later today.
Six fixes from bringing up Meshtastic on an nRF54L15-DK with this core (s145 9.0.0, v0.3.0). The main one is an idle hang: the core went to sleep in the tickless idle and never woke up, every 40 min to a few hours, until the watchdog reset it.
The idle hang (a91802b)
Nothing on this core calls
nrfx_grtc_init(), so GRTCTIMEOUTandWAKETIMEkept their reset values, 0 and 1. The SYSCOUNTER stopped the moment the CPU slept and had a single 32 kHz cycle to wake up before a compare. A J-Link watcher polling a RAM black box read the GRTC live during five hangs, before touching the SYSCOUNTER (reading it wakes the board):__WFI(), with no enabled interrupt pending;The commit writes the values of
NRFX_GRTC_SLEEP_DEFAULT_CONFIG(TIMEOUT5,WAKETIME4), which is what Zephyr applies on this part, next toAUTOENand outside the start path, since the GRTC survives soft resets.Before: 5 hangs in 9.5 h. After: 25 h 59 min without a hang or a reset on the same board, firmware and mesh.
The other five
grtc_cc_set()wroteCCH = 0, so ~71 min after power-on every compare landed in the past.grtc_counter_get()now re-reads untilBUSYclears, and the tick catch-up is bounded.attachInterrupt()picks the GPIOTE instance by port (P0 → GPIOTE30, P1 → GPIOTE20; P2 has none).xExpectedIdleTimeis clamped before it multiplies into GRTC ticks.LFS_ERR_IO.WFIinstead of aWFE/ISPR loop, as Zephyr does on this part.GRTC_IRQ_GROUPin the MDK) instead of domain 0, the FLPR's. This is a correctness fix; it did not cure the hang on its own.Follow-ups from review
grtc_cc_set()only carries into the next epoch for targets less than 2^31 ahead. Superseded by f0da2b4, which removes the cap.LFS_ERR_IOlike prog. Bounded in 1530bc4.flash_nrf5x_soc_event_hook()a weak default that answers the RNG seed request, so a request drained by the flash driver is no longer lost. It is weak because Meshtastic defines its own (fix(nrf54): route SoC events drained by the flash driver through the SD event handler firmware#12048). Reworked in 50cb3b8: the hook now hands the request to the SOC task.Follow-ups from the second review
nrfy_grtc_sys_counter_get(),nrfy_grtc_sys_counter_cc_set()). That removes the epoch reconstruction, the uncheckedSYSCOUNTERHread and the cap on the tickless idle. Ticks stay on a grid. A backlog beyond 4 s is caught up 4 s per interrupt and counted ingrtc_tick_backlogsinstead of being dropped.TIMEOUT/WAKETIMEare written with the SYSCOUNTER stopped, asnrfx_grtc_sleep_configure()does.digitalPinToGpiote()in WInterrupts. SoftwareSerial masks its RX interrupt on the GPIOTE that serves its pin.errors, and drops a page after three failed flushes in a row. The NOR erase-then-program flush is gone.Testing
TIMEOUT/WAKETIMEread back over SWD after boot: 5 and 4.nrf54l15dkenv builds with this branch.GRTC_IRQ_GROUPandGRTC_2_IRQnare defined the same way in the nRF54L05/L10/L15 MDK headers, so the#errorin b7bf4ac does not fire on any of them. The blink smoke test for the other variants was not run locally.nrf54l15dkenv. With a676905, 407 SoftDevice flash writes in about an hour of normal use all completed through the event path, with no timeouts and nothing written off inflash_nrf5x_stats; with 2603f4f, every write read over SWD completed with the data check in place. On both builds, config changes saved from the iOS app over BLE survived the reboots they triggered, and the stored configuration was read back after a J-Link reset. The failure paths (timeout, lost completion, failed flush) and an idle longer than 35 min were not exercised.grtc_tick_backlogsstayed at 0. The GRTC low word wrapped 19 times on the 64-bit path. There were 38,161 SoftDevice flash writes, all completed, with no timeouts, errors or write-offs. Rebuilt on 50cb3b8 with Seed the SoftDevice RNG from the CRACEN TRNG on every request #2, the DK booted, saved a config change over BLE and survived its reboot, exchanged DMs both ways and completed a new LESC pairing from iOS. Not exercised: the flash failure paths, the backlog catch-up and SoftwareSerial on hardware.Companion change on the firmware side, which hands the SoC events drained here to Meshtastic's event handler: meshtastic/firmware#12048.
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