[PATCH variant 1] ARM: Prevent KALLSYM size mismatch on ARM.

[David Brown]

ARM builds seem to be plagued by an occasional build error:

    Inconsistent kallsyms data
    This is a bug - please report about it
    Try "make KALLSYMS_EXTRA_PASS=1" as a workaround

The problem has to do with alignment of some sections by the linker.
The kallsyms data is built in two passes by first linking the kernel
without it, and then linking the kernel again with the symbols
included.  Normally, this just shifts the symbols, without changing
their order, and the compression used by the kallsyms gives the same
result.

On non SMP, the per CPU data is empty.  Depending on the where the
alignment ends up, it can come out as either:

   +-------------------+
   | last text segment |
   +-------------------+
   /* padding */
   +-------------------+     <- L1_CACHE_BYTES alignemnt
   | per cpu (empty)   |
   +-------------------+
__per_cpu_end:
   /* padding */
__data_loc:
   +-------------------+     <- THREAD_SIZE alignment
   | data              |
   +-------------------+

or

   +-------------------+
   | last text segment |
   +-------------------+
   /* padding */
   +-------------------+     <- L1_CACHE_BYTES alignemnt
   | per cpu (empty)   |
   +-------------------+
__per_cpu_end:
   /* no padding */
__data_loc:
   +-------------------+     <- THREAD_SIZE alignment
   | data              |
   +-------------------+

if the alignment satisfies both.  Because symbols that have the same
address are sorted by 'nm -n', the second case will be in a different
order than the first case.  This changes the compression, changing the
size of the kallsym data, causing the build failure.

The KALLSYMS_EXTRA_PASS=1 workaround usually works, but it is still
possible to have the alignment change between the second and third
pass.  It's probably even possible for it to never reach a fixedpoint.

The problem only occurs on non-SMP, when the per-cpu data is empty,
and when the data segment has alignment (and immediately follows the
text segments).  In these cases, add the THREAD_SIZE alignment above
the per-cpu data so that the empty segment will always be adjacent to
the data segment.

This shouldn't ever change the size of the kernel, and only should
affect the location of the per_cpu symbols, which contain no data.

Signed-off-by: David Brown <davidb at codeaurora.org>
---
 arch/arm/kernel/vmlinux.lds.S |    3 +++
 1 file changed, 3 insertions(+)

diff --git a/arch/arm/kernel/vmlinux.lds.S b/arch/arm/kernel/vmlinux.lds.S
index 43a31fb..f3778c7 100644
--- a/arch/arm/kernel/vmlinux.lds.S
+++ b/arch/arm/kernel/vmlinux.lds.S
@@ -183,6 +183,9 @@ SECTIONS
 	}
 #endif
 
+#if !defined(CONFIG_SMP) && !defined(CONFIG_XIP_KERNEL)
+	. = ALIGN(THREAD_SIZE);
+#endif
 	PERCPU_SECTION(L1_CACHE_BYTES)
 
 #ifdef CONFIG_XIP_KERNEL
-- 
Sent by an employee of the Qualcomm Innovation Center, Inc.
The Qualcomm Innovation Center, Inc. is a member of the Code Aurora Forum.