[PATCH] arm64/efi: set PE/COFF section alignment to 4 KB

[Roy Franz]

On Fri, Oct 10, 2014 at 3:37 AM, Ard Biesheuvel
<ard.biesheuvel at linaro.org> wrote:
> On 10 October 2014 12:33, Mark Rutland <mark.rutland at arm.com> wrote:
>> Hi Ard,
>>
>> On Fri, Oct 10, 2014 at 10:25:24AM +0100, Ard Biesheuvel wrote:
>>> Position independent AArch64 code needs to be linked and loaded at the same
>>> relative offset from a 4 KB boundary, or adrp/add and adrp/ldr pairs will
>>> not work correctly. (This is how PC relative symbol references with a 4 GB
>>> reach are emitted)
>>>
>>> We need to declare this in the PE/COFF header, otherwise the PE/COFF loader
>>> may load the Image and invoke the stub at an offset which violates this rule.
>>
>> Has this been observed happening, or was this just found by inspection?
>>
>
> This is also something found by inspection, or rather, by the
> discussion going on in the other thread. I am not aware of any PE/COFF
> loaders that may choose an offset that is not 4 KB aligned, even if
> the header we give it appears to allow it.
>

This also resolves the problematic FileAlignment that I noticed when reviewing
the branch to stext patch.

The PE/COFF spec description of FileAlignment

The alignment factor (in bytes) that is
used to align the raw data of sections
in the image file. The value should be
a power of 2 between 512 and 64 K,
inclusive. The default is 512. If the
SectionAlignment is less than the
architecture's page size, then
FileAlignment must match
SectionAlignment.

Previously the section alignment was less than the page size,
and FileAlignment/SectionAlignment didn't match.

Reviewed-by: Roy Franz <roy.franz at linaro.org>

>>> Signed-off-by: Ard Biesheuvel <ard.biesheuvel at linaro.org>
>>> ---
>>>  arch/arm64/kernel/head.S | 4 ++--
>>>  1 file changed, 2 insertions(+), 2 deletions(-)
>>>
>>> diff --git a/arch/arm64/kernel/head.S b/arch/arm64/kernel/head.S
>>> index 0a6e4f924df8..5e83e5b8a9de 100644
>>> --- a/arch/arm64/kernel/head.S
>>> +++ b/arch/arm64/kernel/head.S
>>> @@ -159,7 +159,7 @@ optional_header:
>>>
>>>  extra_header_fields:
>>>       .quad   0                               // ImageBase
>>> -     .long   0x20                            // SectionAlignment
>>> +     .long   0x1000                          // SectionAlignment
>>>       .long   0x8                             // FileAlignment
>>>       .short  0                               // MajorOperatingSystemVersion
>>>       .short  0                               // MinorOperatingSystemVersion
>>> @@ -226,7 +226,7 @@ section_table:
>>>       .short  0               // NumberOfRelocations  (0 for executables)
>>>       .short  0               // NumberOfLineNumbers  (0 for executables)
>>>       .long   0xe0500020      // Characteristics (section flags)
>>> -     .align 5
>>> +     .align 12
>>
>> Can we get a comment explaining why stext needs the additional
>> alignment? Something like:
>>
>>         /*
>>          * EFI will load stext onwards at the 4k section alignment
>>          * described in the PE/COFF header. To ensure that instruction
>>          * sequences using an adrp and a :lo12: immediate will function
>>          * correctly at this alignment, we must ensure that stext is
>>          * placed at a 4k boundary in the Image to begin with.
>>          */
>>         .align 12
>>
>
> OK
>
> --
> Ard.