Build LSK 3.14 kernel with android-toolchain

[Jisheng Zhang]

On Tue, 2 Dec 2014 02:24:03 -0800
Arnd Bergmann <arnd at arndb.de> wrote:

> On Tuesday 02 December 2014 17:39:21 Jisheng Zhang wrote:
> > 
> > On Tue, 2 Dec 2014 01:04:54 -0800
> > Shawn Guo <shawn.guo at linaro.org> wrote:
> > 
> > > + LAKML and more people.
> > > 
> > > On Mon, Dec 01, 2014 at 05:38:38PM +0100, Arnd Bergmann wrote:
> > > > On Monday 01 December 2014 16:32:21 Shawn Guo wrote:
> > > > > Is it a valid or supported use case to build LSK 3.14 kernel with
> > > > > android-toolchain?  I can build a LSK 3.14 kernel with Linux
> > > > > toolchain gcc-linaro-arm-none-eabi-4.9-2014.09, which boots fine on
> > > > > my board. When I build the same kernel with
> > > > > android-toolchain-eabi-4.9-2014.09-x86, the kernel can be built out
> > > > > successfully, but it fails to boot on the board at very early stage
> > > > > with only uncompressing message shown up like below.
> > > > > 
> > > > > Uncompressing Linux... done, booting the kernel.
> > > > > 
> > > > > And it's not a LSK 3.14 specific problem, I tried to build mainline
> > > > > 3.10, 3.14 and 3.18-rc4 with the android-toolchain, and they all
> > > > > failed to boot.
> > > > > 
> > > > > I need some help to understand if it's a valid use case at all,
> > > > > before I try to looking into the problem.
> > > > 
> > > > I would expect it to work, it's probably a good idea to find out
> > > > why it doesn't. For all I know 'arm-none-eabi' is actually /not/
> > > > supported for building the kernel, since that doesn't use the Linux
> > > > Linux variant of eabi, while 'arm-*-linux-gnueabi' or
> > > > 'arm-*-linux-gnueabihf' is the default for Linux these days and
> > > > 'arm-*-linux-android' should be compatible with that.
> > > 
> > > Okay.  Thanks for the info.  It seems that I should download
> > > gcc-linaro-arm-linux-gnueabihf-4.9-2014.09 for comparison testing then.
> > > Actually, in the very first testing I used arm-linux-gnueabi-gcc 4.7.3
> > > shipped with Ubuntu 14.04.
> > > 
> > > > What is the
> > > > exact target triplet you use in those two cases?
> > > 
> > > They are arm-none-eabi and arm-linux-androideabi.  And I also replaced
> > > the first toolchain with arm-linux-gnueabi one, and got the same result.
> 
> Ok, so they are really all different.
> 
> > > > 
> > > > A few things you could try:
> > > > 
> > > > - boot it in qemu using the vexpress or virt platform code, see if
> > > >   the symptom is the same. If it is, attach gdb to the qemu gdbstub
> > > >   to look at the contents of the _log_buf.
> > > > 
> > > > - Maybe debug_ll crashes, try disabling that
> > > > 
> > > > - Maybe debug_ll is disabled already, try enabling it to see if you
> > > >   get more output.
> > > 
> > > I tracked it a little bit with debug_ll routine printch() and found it
> > > dies at the first pr_info() call in arch/arm/kernel/setup.c:
> > > 
> > >       pr_info("Booting Linux on physical CPU 0x%x\n", mpidr);
> > > 
> > > And I spent some time to find out that the issue was introduced by
> > > commit dad5451a322b (ARM: 7605/1: vmlinux.lds: Move .notes section
> > > next to the rodata) since v3.8 release.  Reverting the commit helps me
> > > to get a booting kernel that is built by arm-linux-androideabi
> > > toolchain.  But I do not have the knowledge to understand what is
> > > happening.
> > > 
> > 
> > From my experience in last several years
> > 
> > 1. the arm-linux-androideabi- toolchain sets some options by default, PIC
> > for example, even -mno-android can't disable all the side effects per my
> > test.
> 
> Yes, that's definitely possible. Any idea how the android folks build their
> kernel?

copied from https://android.googlesource.com/toolchain/build/+/HEAD/README

The Android toolchain supports the following targets:
   a. arm-linux-androideabi
   b. arm-eabi  (for Android kernel)
   c. arm-newlib-eabi	(for runnng gcc regression tests)
   d. i[3456]86-*-linux-gnu, x86_64-*-linux-gnu	(for x86 targets)

So they build android kernel using the arm-eabi- toolchain.

> 
> > 2. the arm-linux-eandroideabi- toolchain use gold for linker by default.
> > Maybe gold can't understand vmlinux.lds correctly?
> 
> That would be very easy to test, just set LD=${CROSS_COMPILE}ld.bfd on the
> command line and rebuild. In my testing, I've encountered a number of
> different bugs in both ld.bfd and ld.gold that prevent you from building
> the kernel.

That may be caused by issue #1. We encounter weired kernel panics, bugs when
using the arm-linux-androideabi to build linux kernel. all are gone after
switching to arm-eabi- or arm-linux-guneabi-

Thanks