Files
rebbarb/scripts/send-dol.py
T
Roflin ee889eb40f netboot: make the transfer round-trip efficient
Transfer now works on hardware -- the block counter climbs -- but slowly, with
some ACKs missing.  It is ROUND-TRIP bound, not bandwidth bound: stop-and-wait
means one block per round trip, so three things dominated and all three were
conservative bring-up choices rather than considered ones.

  - Block size 256 -> 1024.  A 298 KB image is 1166 blocks at 256 but only 292
    at 1024.  256 was chosen to stay near the only multi-page frame ever proven
    on hardware (a 342-byte DHCP broadcast); large frames are now safe because
    RBFI stops a full ring being overwritten and stop-and-wait keeps exactly
    one frame in flight, so five pages of a fourteen-page budget is never
    contended.  --block 256 remains as a fallback.

  - Host ACK timeout 0.5 s -> 0.1 s.  The round trip is a few milliseconds on
    a LAN, so half a second meant every lost ACK cost half a second.

  - The GC's TI poll slept 500 us up to 20 times, costing up to 10 ms per ACK
    even when the transmit succeeded immediately -- on every block.  It now
    polls without sleeping; a bba_r8 is itself tens of microseconds, so a bare
    loop samples often enough and returns as soon as TI sets.

Absence of TI is explicitly NOT fatal.  TI only means TXFrameDrain handed the
frame to the W5100, so the frame may well have gone out; and if it did not,
the host's retransmit covers it.  Blocking longer would slow the common case
to protect against the rare one.

Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
2026-10-09 19:04:52 +02:00

141 lines
5.6 KiB
Python
Executable File

#!/usr/bin/env python3
"""Send a .dol to the running gc_bba_test over raw ethernet, for self-update.
Pairs with gc_bba_test/source/netboot.c. Deliberately NOT IP: frames carry a
private ethertype and a 12-byte header, so there is no ARP, no IP stack and no
DHCP to go wrong -- it exercises exactly the BBA TX/RX paths the test suite
already proves on hardware.
Transfer is STOP-AND-WAIT: one block in flight, ACKed before the next. That
is load-bearing, not laziness -- the gateware does not consume RRP, so the
SPRAM ring has no overflow protection, and one outstanding frame means it
cannot overrun.
Needs CAP_NET_RAW, so run with sudo.
sudo ./scripts/send-dol.py enp3s0 gc_bba_test/gc_bba_test.dol
"""
import argparse
import os
import socket
import struct
import sys
import time
ETHERTYPE = 0x88B5
MAGIC = b"GCUP"
OP_DATA, OP_ACK, OP_DONE = 1, 2, 3
# 1024-byte payloads -> ~1050-byte frames, five of the SPRAM ring's 15 pages.
#
# 256 was the conservative bring-up value, chosen to stay near the only
# multi-page frame ever proven on hardware (a 342-byte DHCP broadcast). Small
# blocks are now known to work, and two things make the large ones safe:
# RBFI stops a full ring being overwritten, and stop-and-wait keeps exactly one
# frame in flight, so five pages of a fourteen-page budget is never contended.
#
# This matters for speed: a 298 KB image is 1166 blocks at 256 bytes but only
# 292 at 1024, and the transfer is round-trip bound, not bandwidth bound. Drop
# back with --block 256 if large frames misbehave.
BLOCK_DEFAULT = 1024
HDR = 26
# The GC's MAC comes from PAR0-5, which the gateware pre-populates with a
# Nintendo OUI. Discovered from the first ACK, so this is only the initial
# destination for block 0.
BROADCAST = b"\xff" * 6
def frame(dst, src, op, seq, nblocks, payload=b""):
f = bytearray()
f += dst + src + struct.pack("!H", ETHERTYPE)
f += MAGIC + bytes([op, 0]) + struct.pack("!HHH", seq, nblocks, len(payload))
f += payload
if len(f) < 60: # ethernet minimum
f += b"\x00" * (60 - len(f))
return bytes(f)
def main():
ap = argparse.ArgumentParser()
ap.add_argument("iface", help="network interface facing the GameCube")
ap.add_argument("dol", help=".dol to send")
ap.add_argument("--timeout", type=float, default=0.1,
help="per-block ACK timeout in seconds (default 0.1). "
"The round trip is a few ms on a LAN, so 0.5 made "
"every lost ACK cost half a second.")
ap.add_argument("--retries", type=int, default=20,
help="per-block retransmits before giving up (default 20)")
ap.add_argument("--dest", default="/gc_bba_test.dol",
help="where to write it on the SD card "
"(default /gc_bba_test.dol)")
ap.add_argument("--block", type=int, default=BLOCK_DEFAULT,
help=f"payload bytes per frame (default {BLOCK_DEFAULT}; "
"the GC caps it at 1024)")
args = ap.parse_args()
if not 1 <= args.block <= 1024:
sys.exit("--block must be 1..1024 (the GC's NB_BLOCK_MAX)")
img = open(args.dol, "rb").read()
blocks = [img[i:i + args.block] for i in range(0, len(img), args.block)]
if not blocks:
sys.exit("empty image")
if len(blocks) > 0xFFFF:
sys.exit("image too large for a 16-bit block count")
s = socket.socket(socket.AF_PACKET, socket.SOCK_RAW, socket.htons(ETHERTYPE))
s.bind((args.iface, 0))
src = s.getsockname()[4]
s.settimeout(args.timeout)
print(f"{args.dol}: {len(img)} bytes, {len(blocks)} blocks of {args.block}")
print(f"sending from {src.hex(':')} on {args.iface}")
dst = BROADCAST
t0 = time.time()
for seq, payload in enumerate(blocks):
for attempt in range(args.retries):
s.send(frame(dst, src, OP_DATA, seq, len(blocks), payload))
try:
while True:
pkt = s.recv(2048)
if len(pkt) < HDR or pkt[14:18] != MAGIC:
continue
if pkt[18] != OP_ACK:
continue
if struct.unpack("!H", pkt[20:22])[0] != seq:
continue # stale ACK for an earlier block
if dst == BROADCAST:
dst = pkt[6:12]
print(f"GameCube is {dst.hex(':')}")
break
break
except socket.timeout:
if attempt == 0:
print(f" block {seq}: no ACK, retrying", file=sys.stderr)
else:
sys.exit(f"block {seq}: no ACK after {args.retries} tries")
if seq % 32 == 0 or seq == len(blocks) - 1:
pct = 100 * (seq + 1) // len(blocks)
print(f"\r {pct:3d}% block {seq + 1}/{len(blocks)}", end="", flush=True)
# DONE carries the destination path and is not ACKed: the GC goes
# straight on to writing the card and booting Swiss, so there is nothing
# left running to answer. Send it a few times in case one is lost.
dest = args.dest.encode()
if len(dest) >= 64:
sys.exit("--dest too long (max 63 bytes)")
for _ in range(5):
s.send(frame(dst, src, OP_DONE, 0, len(blocks), dest))
time.sleep(0.02)
dt = time.time() - t0
print(f"\nsent {len(img)} bytes in {dt:.1f}s "
f"({len(img) * 8 / dt / 1e6:.2f} Mbit/s)")
print(f"GC writes it to {args.dest} on the SD card, verifies it, "
f"then boots /boot.dol")
if __name__ == "__main__":
if os.geteuid() != 0:
print("warning: AF_PACKET needs root; try sudo", file=sys.stderr)
main()