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dd590d4d57
Add a new klp diff subcommand which performs a binary diff between two
object files and extracts changed functions into a new object which can
then be linked into a livepatch module.
This builds on concepts from the longstanding out-of-tree kpatch [1]
project which began in 2012 and has been used for many years to generate
livepatch modules for production kernels. However, this is a complete
rewrite which incorporates hard-earned lessons from 12+ years of
maintaining kpatch.
Key improvements compared to kpatch-build:
- Integrated with objtool: Leverages objtool's existing control-flow
graph analysis to help detect changed functions.
- Works on vmlinux.o: Supports late-linked objects, making it
compatible with LTO, IBT, and similar.
- Simplified code base: ~3k fewer lines of code.
- Upstream: No more out-of-tree #ifdef hacks, far less cruft.
- Cleaner internals: Vastly simplified logic for symbol/section/reloc
inclusion and special section extraction.
- Robust __LINE__ macro handling: Avoids false positive binary diffs
caused by the __LINE__ macro by introducing a fix-patch-lines script
(coming in a later patch) which injects #line directives into the
source .patch to preserve the original line numbers at compile time.
Note the end result of this subcommand is not yet functionally complete.
Livepatch needs some ELF magic which linkers don't like:
- Two relocation sections (.rela*, .klp.rela*) for the same text
section.
- Use of SHN_LIVEPATCH to mark livepatch symbols.
Unfortunately linkers tend to mangle such things. To work around that,
klp diff generates a linker-compliant intermediate binary which encodes
the relevant KLP section/reloc/symbol metadata.
After module linking, a klp post-link step (coming soon) will clean up
the mess and convert the linked .ko into a fully compliant livepatch
module.
Note this subcommand requires the diffed binaries to have been compiled
with -ffunction-sections and -fdata-sections, and processed with
'objtool --checksum'. Those constraints will be handled by a klp-build
script introduced in a later patch.
Without '-ffunction-sections -fdata-sections', reliable object diffing
would be infeasible due to toolchain limitations:
- For intra-file+intra-section references, the compiler might
occasionally generated hard-coded instruction offsets instead of
relocations.
- Section-symbol-based references can be ambiguous:
- Overlapping or zero-length symbols create ambiguity as to which
symbol is being referenced.
- A reference to the end of a symbol (e.g., checking array bounds)
can be misinterpreted as a reference to the next symbol, or vice
versa.
A potential future alternative to '-ffunction-sections -fdata-sections'
would be to introduce a toolchain option that forces symbol-based
(non-section) relocations.
Acked-by: Petr Mladek <pmladek@suse.com>
Tested-by: Joe Lawrence <joe.lawrence@redhat.com>
Signed-off-by: Josh Poimboeuf <jpoimboe@kernel.org>
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| arch | ||
| block | ||
| certs | ||
| crypto | ||
| Documentation | ||
| drivers | ||
| fs | ||
| include | ||
| init | ||
| io_uring | ||
| ipc | ||
| kernel | ||
| lib | ||
| LICENSES | ||
| mm | ||
| net | ||
| rust | ||
| samples | ||
| scripts | ||
| security | ||
| sound | ||
| tools | ||
| usr | ||
| virt | ||
| .clang-format | ||
| .clippy.toml | ||
| .cocciconfig | ||
| .editorconfig | ||
| .get_maintainer.ignore | ||
| .gitattributes | ||
| .gitignore | ||
| .mailmap | ||
| .pylintrc | ||
| .rustfmt.toml | ||
| COPYING | ||
| CREDITS | ||
| Kbuild | ||
| Kconfig | ||
| MAINTAINERS | ||
| Makefile | ||
| README | ||
Linux kernel
============
There are several guides for kernel developers and users. These guides can
be rendered in a number of formats, like HTML and PDF. Please read
Documentation/admin-guide/README.rst first.
In order to build the documentation, use ``make htmldocs`` or
``make pdfdocs``. The formatted documentation can also be read online at:
https://www.kernel.org/doc/html/latest/
There are various text files in the Documentation/ subdirectory,
several of them using the reStructuredText markup notation.
Please read the Documentation/process/changes.rst file, as it contains the
requirements for building and running the kernel, and information about
the problems which may result by upgrading your kernel.