Re: [RFC PATCH] x86/head_64.S: remove redundant check that kernel address is 2M aligned

From: Brian Gerst
Date: Fri Jan 22 2016 - 20:42:20 EST


On Fri, Jan 22, 2016 at 1:13 PM, Alexander Kuleshov
<kuleshovmail@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> We check that the base address of the kernel is 2M aligned in
> the arch/x86/kernel/head_65.S right after jump to the decompressed
> kernel. But we already have a check in the decompress_kernel()
> which validates that kernel location is MIN_KERNEL_ALIGN aligned
> which is 2M too for x86_64.
>
> Signed-off-by: Alexander Kuleshov <kuleshovmail@xxxxxxxxx>
> ---
> arch/x86/kernel/head_64.S | 6 ------
> 1 file changed, 6 deletions(-)
>
> diff --git a/arch/x86/kernel/head_64.S b/arch/x86/kernel/head_64.S
> index ffdc0e8..4967cba 100644
> --- a/arch/x86/kernel/head_64.S
> +++ b/arch/x86/kernel/head_64.S
> @@ -75,12 +75,6 @@ startup_64:
> leaq _text(%rip), %rbp
> subq $_text - __START_KERNEL_map, %rbp
>
> - /* Is the address not 2M aligned? */
> - movq %rbp, %rax
> - andl $~PMD_PAGE_MASK, %eax
> - testl %eax, %eax
> - jnz bad_address
> -
> /*
> * Is the address too large?
> */

I think we still need to do the check, in case we came from a 64-bit
bootloader that directly jumped to startup_64. However, this check
can be simplified to:

testl $~PMD_PAGE_MASK, %ebp
jnz bad_address

--
Brian Gerst