openwall / openwall/john

ztex: libusb error followed by Timeout when uploading firmware to ~12+ devices

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#2,600 27 comments 0 reactions 1 assignee View on GitHub

@Apingis is already working on this.

Since Oct 3, 2017.

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Description

During the firmware upload that happens after initial power-up, if more than about 12 boards (it seems to vary) are present, a segmentation fault occurs:

SN XXXXXXXXXX: firmware uploaded
SN XXXXXXXXXX: firmware uploaded
SN XXXXXXXXXX: firmware uploaded
SN XXXXXXXXXX: firmware uploaded
SN XXXXXXXXXX: firmware uploaded
SN XXXXXXXXXX: firmware uploaded
SN XXXXXXXXXX: firmware uploaded
SN XXXXXXXXXX: firmware uploaded
SN XXXXXXXXXX: firmware uploaded
SN XXXXXXXXXX: firmware uploaded
SN XXXXXXXXXX: firmware uploaded
SN XXXXXXXXXX: firmware uploaded
SN XXXXXXXXXX: firmware uploaded
Segmentation fault

The workaround is to simply re-run john with the same parameters again. The upload picks up where it left off, uploading firmware to any remaining devices, and then proceeding to upload bitstreams and start the job.

This is speculation, but it's almost as though there's a problem with uploading firmware to more than a certain specific number of devices in a row, or after a certain amount of data is moved through the process, or a certain amount of processing or wallclock time, etc.

If I had a much larger cluster, my guess is that the second run would segfault after another 12 or so devices, and the workaround would need to be reapplied until the last group of devices falls under the segfault threshold, at which point work would begin.

This happens for both descrypt-ztex and bcrypt-ztex.

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