Re: [PATCH v4] x86/entry: emit a symbol for register restoring thunk

From: Josh Poimboeuf
Date: Thu Jan 14 2021 - 10:16:15 EST


On Thu, Jan 14, 2021 at 11:39:28AM +0100, Borislav Petkov wrote:
> On Wed, Jan 13, 2021 at 09:56:04AM -0800, Nick Desaulniers wrote:
> > Apologies, that was not my intention. I've sent a follow up in
> > https://lore.kernel.org/lkml/20210113174620.958429-1-ndesaulniers@xxxxxxxxxx/T/#u
> > since BP picked up v3 in tip x86/entry:
> > https://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/tip/tip.git/commit/?h=x86/entry&id=bde718b7e154afc99e1956b18a848401ce8e1f8e
>
> It is the topmost patch so I can rebase...
>
> Also, I replicated that text into linkage.h and removed the change over
> SYM_CODE_START and I've got the below.
>
> Further complaints?
>
> ---
> From: Nick Desaulniers <ndesaulniers@xxxxxxxxxx>
> Date: Tue, 12 Jan 2021 11:46:24 -0800
> Subject: [PATCH] x86/entry: Emit a symbol for register restoring thunk
>
> Arnd found a randconfig that produces the warning:
>
> arch/x86/entry/thunk_64.o: warning: objtool: missing symbol for insn at
> offset 0x3e
>
> when building with LLVM_IAS=1 (Clang's integrated assembler). Josh
> notes:
>
> With the LLVM assembler not generating section symbols, objtool has no
> way to reference this code when it generates ORC unwinder entries,
> because this code is outside of any ELF function.
>
> The limitation now being imposed by objtool is that all code must be
> contained in an ELF symbol. And .L symbols don't create such symbols.
>
> So basically, you can use an .L symbol *inside* a function or a code
> segment, you just can't use the .L symbol to contain the code using a
> SYM_*_START/END annotation pair.
>
> Fangrui notes that this optimization is helpful for reducing image size
> when compiling with -ffunction-sections and -fdata-sections. I have
> observed on the order of tens of thousands of symbols for the kernel
> images built with those flags.
>
> A patch has been authored against GNU binutils to match this behavior
> of not generating unused section symbols ([1]), so this will
> also become a problem for users of GNU binutils once they upgrade to 2.36.
>
> Omit the .L prefix on a label so that the assembler will emit an entry
> into the symbol table for the label, with STB_LOCAL binding. This
> enables objtool to generate proper unwind info here with LLVM_IAS=1 or
> GNU binutils 2.36+.
>
> [ bp: Massage commit message. ]

Acked-by: Josh Poimboeuf <jpoimboe@xxxxxxxxxx>

--
Josh