Messages in this thread | | | Date | Fri, 6 Oct 2006 23:35:47 -0700 | From | Andrew Morton <> | Subject | Re: [PATCH 1/12] i386: Distinguish absolute symbols |
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On Tue, 3 Oct 2006 13:04:13 -0400 Vivek Goyal <vgoyal@in.ibm.com> wrote:
> Ld knows about 2 kinds of symbols, absolute and section > relative. Section relative symbols symbols change value > when a section is moved and absolute symbols do not. > > Currently in the linker script we have several labels > marking the beginning and ending of sections that > are outside of sections, making them absolute symbols. > Having a mixture of absolute and section relative > symbols refereing to the same data is currently harmless > but it is confusing. > > This must be done carefully as newer revs of ld do not place > symbols that appear in sections without data and instead > ld makes those symbols global :( > > My ultimate goal is to build a relocatable kernel. The > safest and least intrusive technique is to generate > relocation entries so the kernel can be relocated at load > time. The only penalty would be an increase in the size > of the kernel binary. The problem is that if absolute and > relocatable symbols are not properly specified absolute symbols > will be relocated or section relative symbols won't be, which > is fatal. > > The practical motivation is that when generating kernels that > will run from a reserved area for analyzing what caused > a kernel panic, it is simpler if you don't need to hard code > the physical memory location they will run at, especially > for the distributions.
This patch causes the following warnings:
/opt/crosstool/gcc-4.1.0-glibc-2.3.6/i686-unknown-linux-gnu/bin/i686-unknown-linux-gnu-ld: .tmp_vmlinux1: warning: allocated section `.smp_altinstr_replacement' not in segment /opt/crosstool/gcc-4.1.0-glibc-2.3.6/i686-unknown-linux-gnu/bin/i686-unknown-linux-gnu-ld: .tmp_vmlinux2: warning: allocated section `.smp_altinstr_replacement' not in segment /opt/crosstool/gcc-4.1.0-glibc-2.3.6/i686-unknown-linux-gnu/bin/i686-unknown-linux-gnu-ld: vmlinux: warning: allocated section `.smp_altinstr_replacement' not in segment
The patch i386-force-section-size-to-be-non-zero-to-prevent-a-symbol-becoming-absolute.patch makes those warnings go away again, but we decided to drop that.
This:
.smp_altinstr_replacement : AT(ADDR(.smp_altinstr_replacement) - LOAD_OFFSET) { *(.smp_altinstr_replacement) . = ALIGN(4096); __smp_alt_end = .; }
looks odd. What's the point in putting a gap before __smp_alt_end? Moving __smp_alt_end to before the ALIGN doesn't prevent the warning.
GNU ld version 2.16.1, gcc-4.1.0, config at http://userweb.kernel.org/~akpm/config-vmm.txt
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