[Tinyos-devel] Re: 2.0.1- T2 Radio Stack

[Geoffrey Werner-Allen]

Hi David:

Head version seems to work fine, so it looks like this got fixed downstream from 
2.0.2.

Best,

-gwa-

David Moss wrote:
> Hi Geoff -
> 
> There were some significant updates to the CC2420 radio stack from 2.0.1 to
> 2.0.2, and a good chunk of it was related to debugging and reliability.  I
> don't recall seeing a bug like you're describing, except on earlier versions
> of the CC2420 stack (not sure if "earlier" means 2.0.1, or before). There
> was certainly a problem at one point where the MSP430 SPI bus would lock up
> the node if anything tried to do an operation with a 0-byte length.  This
> has been fixed in recent versions of TinyOS.  And the 2.0.2 CC2420 radio
> stack is much more stable than the 2.0.1 radio stack because it's been unit
> tested.  The unit testing alone fixed a large number of bugs.  Even after
> 2.0.2, the current CVS repository contains a few minor bug fixes to the
> stack.  
> 
> I'm CC'ing -devel on this to see if anyone else has experienced lock-up
> issues as you're describing.  At a minimum, I would recommend dropping in
> the latest CC2420 radio stack to see if that makes a difference. The
> interfaces provided by the stack should be the same, so dropping in a new
> stack will be a matter of editing your .platform file to pull in the new
> directories.
> 
> -David
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Geoffrey Werner-Allen [mailto:werner at eecs.harvard.edu] 
> Sent: Wednesday, March 12, 2008 10:55 AM
> To: David Moss
> Subject: 2.0.1- T2 Radio Stack
> 
> Hey David:
> 
> Not sure if you're the right target for this, but it seems like you've been 
> doing the active development in the T2 CC2420 radio stack so here goes.
> Feel 
> free to forward as appropriate.
> 
> I'm seeing a lock up on TMote Sky nodes that seems related to radio 
> communication.  My setup is quite simple: I have two nodes, on acting as the
> 
> root of a CTP routing tree (and forwarding packets to a dedicated node
> running 
> BaseStation) and another as a leaf.  Initiating a large data transfer from
> the 
> lead node through the root hangs the root node almost without fail.  This is
> a 
> very hard crash in that a) the node seems completely hung and b) it doesn't
> even 
> get to the point where a watchdog timer can reboot the system (we have one 
> active).  At various points I thought that this was a function of
> interleaving 
> Flash I/O or medium-frequency sampling (100Hz) with the radio communication,
> but 
> I can get it to happen between two nodes that are (essentially) doing little
> 
> else: running the TimeSync protocol and participating in Dissemination, but 
> that's it.  The bug is highly-repeatable.
> 
> I can tickle this on T2.0.1 and T2.0.2.  Haven't tried the bleeding-edge CVS
> 
> yet, but I can if it's helpful.  I'm not going to be a terribly large amount
> of 
> help debugging this before the Sensys deadline, but I'm concerned about my 
> ability to utilize some of the LPL features in the 2.0.1-on stacks, so I
> thought 
> I'd ask if this is something you've seen that fixed in checkins downstream
> from 
> 2.0.2.
> 
> Hope all's well!
> 
> Best,
> 
> -gwa-

-- 
geoffrey werner-allen :: 617.694.7261 :: www.eecs.harvard.edu/~werner