Commit b9b32bf70f ("ARM: use linker magic for vectors and vector stubs")
updated the linker script to emit the .vectors and .stubs sections into a
VMA range that is zero based and disjoint from the normal static kernel
region. The reason for that was that this way, the sections can be placed
exactly 4 KB apart, while the payload of the .vectors section is only 32
bytes.
Since the symbols that are part of the .stubs section are emitted into the
kallsyms table, they appear with zero based addresses as well, e.g.,
00001004 t vector_rst
00001020 t vector_irq
000010a0 t vector_dabt
00001120 t vector_pabt
000011a0 t vector_und
00001220 t vector_addrexcptn
00001240 t vector_fiq
00001240 T vector_fiq_offset
As this confuses perf when it accesses the kallsyms tables, commit
7122c3e915 ("scripts/link-vmlinux.sh: only filter kernel symbols for
arm") implemented a somewhat ugly special case for ARM, where the value
of CONFIG_PAGE_OFFSET is passed to scripts/kallsyms, and symbols whose
addresses are below it are filtered out. Note that this special case only
applies to CONFIG_XIP_KERNEL=n, not because the issue the patch addresses
exists only in that case, but because finding a limit below which to apply
the filtering is not entirely straightforward.
Since the .vectors and .stubs sections contain position independent code
that is never executed in place, we can emit it at its most likely runtime
VMA (for more recent CPUs), which is 0xffff0000 for the vector table and
0xffff1000 for the stubs. Not only does this fix the perf issue with
kallsyms, allowing us to drop the special case in scripts/kallsyms
entirely, it also gives debuggers a more realistic view of the address
space, and setting breakpoints or single stepping through code in the
vector table or the stubs is more likely to work as expected on CPUs that
use a high vector address. E.g.,
00001240 A vector_fiq_offset
...
c0c35000 T __init_begin
c0c35000 T __vectors_start
c0c35020 T __stubs_start
c0c35020 T __vectors_end
c0c352e0 T _sinittext
c0c352e0 T __stubs_end
...
ffff1004 t vector_rst
ffff1020 t vector_irq
ffff10a0 t vector_dabt
ffff1120 t vector_pabt
ffff11a0 t vector_und
ffff1220 t vector_addrexcptn
ffff1240 T vector_fiq
(Note that vector_fiq_offset is now an absolute symbol, which kallsyms
already ignores by default)
The LMA footprint is identical with or without this change, only the VMAs
are different:
Before:
Idx Name Size VMA LMA File off Algn
...
14 .notes 00000024 c0c34020 c0c34020 00a34020 2**2
CONTENTS, ALLOC, LOAD, READONLY, CODE
15 .vectors 00000020 00000000 c0c35000 00a40000 2**1
CONTENTS, ALLOC, LOAD, READONLY, CODE
16 .stubs 000002c0 00001000 c0c35020 00a41000 2**5
CONTENTS, ALLOC, LOAD, READONLY, CODE
17 .init.text 0006b1b8 c0c352e0 c0c352e0 00a452e0 2**5
CONTENTS, ALLOC, LOAD, READONLY, CODE
...
After:
Idx Name Size VMA LMA File off Algn
...
14 .notes 00000024 c0c34020 c0c34020 00a34020 2**2
CONTENTS, ALLOC, LOAD, READONLY, CODE
15 .vectors 00000020 ffff0000 c0c35000 00a40000 2**1
CONTENTS, ALLOC, LOAD, READONLY, CODE
16 .stubs 000002c0 ffff1000 c0c35020 00a41000 2**5
CONTENTS, ALLOC, LOAD, READONLY, CODE
17 .init.text 0006b1b8 c0c352e0 c0c352e0 00a452e0 2**5
CONTENTS, ALLOC, LOAD, READONLY, CODE
...
Acked-by: Nicolas Pitre <nico@linaro.org>
Acked-by: Chris Brandt <chris.brandt@renesas.com>
Signed-off-by: Ard Biesheuvel <ard.biesheuvel@linaro.org>
Signed-off-by: Russell King <rmk+kernel@arm.linux.org.uk>
31b96cae5c