[PATCH] ARM: force linker to use PIC veneers

[Dave Martin]

On Tue, Mar 24, 2015 at 01:50:40PM +0100, Ard Biesheuvel wrote:
> On 24 March 2015 at 13:22, Dave Martin <Dave.Martin at arm.com> wrote:
> > On Tue, Mar 24, 2015 at 11:16:24AM +0100, Ard Biesheuvel wrote:
> >> When building a very large kernel, it is up to the linker to decide
> >> when and where to insert stubs to allow calls to functions that are
> >> out of range for the ordinary b/bl instructions.
> >>
> >> However, since the kernel is built as a position dependent binary,
> >> these stubs (aka veneers) may contain absolute addresses, which will
> >> break such veneer assisted far calls performed with the MMU off.
> >>
> >> For instance, the call from __enable_mmu() in the .head.text section
> >> to __turn_mmu_on() in the .idmap.text section may be turned into
> >> something like this:
> >>
> >> c0008168 <__enable_mmu>:
> >> c0008168:       f020 0002       bic.w   r0, r0, #2
> >> c000816c:       f420 5080       bic.w   r0, r0, #4096
> >> c0008170:       f000 b846       b.w     c0008200 <____turn_mmu_on_veneer>
> >> [...]
> >> c0008200 <____turn_mmu_on_veneer>:
> >> c0008200:       4778            bx      pc
> >> c0008202:       46c0            nop
> >> c0008204:       e59fc000        ldr     ip, [pc]
> >> c0008208:       e12fff1c        bx      ip
> >> c000820c:       c13dfae1        teqgt   sp, r1, ror #21
> >> [...]
> >> c13dfae0 <__turn_mmu_on>:
> >> c13dfae0:       4600            mov     r0, r0
> >> [...]
> >>
> >> After adding --pic-veneer to the LDFLAGS, the veneer is emitted like
> >> this instead:
> >>
> >> c0008200 <____turn_mmu_on_veneer>:
> >> c0008200:       4778            bx      pc
> >> c0008202:       46c0            nop
> >> c0008204:       e59fc004        ldr     ip, [pc, #4]
> >> c0008208:       e08fc00c        add     ip, pc, ip
> >> c000820c:       e12fff1c        bx      ip
> >> c0008210:       013d7d31        teqeq   sp, r1, lsr sp
> >> c0008214:       00000000        andeq   r0, r0, r0
> >>
> >> Note that this particular example is best addressed by moving
> >> .head.text and .idmap.text closer together, but this issue could
> >> potentially affect any code that needs to execute with the
> >> MMU off.
> >>
> >> Signed-off-by: Ard Biesheuvel <ard.biesheuvel at linaro.org>
> >
> > Although that fixes the problem, wouldn't this introduce extra potential
> > overhead for every call in the kernel?
> >
> 
> It does not change whether a veneer is emitted or not, it only affects
> the PIC nature of it.
> So the overhead is 1 additional word for the add instruction, which I

You're right, I misunderstood lightly what is going on there.

> think is a small price to pay for correctness, especially considering
> that someone building such a big kernel obviously does not optimize
> for size.
> 
> > How many such veneers get added in the your kernel configuration, and
> > how many are actually necessary (i.e., calls between MMU-off code and
> > elsewhere)?
> >
> 
> Very few. In addition to the example (which will be addressed in
> another way regardless) there are some resume functions that get
> allocated in .data, and those would need it as well. I have also
> proposed b_far/bl_far macros that could be used there as well.
> 
> The primary concern is that you can't really check whether any
> problematic veneers have been emitted, unless all code that may run
> with the MMU off is moved to the idmap.text section.

That's a valid argument.

Come to think of it, I can't think of a good reason why we don't
pass --use-blx to the linker for THUMB2_KERNEL.  I think that would
at least make these sequences a bit less painful by getting rid of
the "bx pc" stuff.

How big is your kernel?  It would be good to compare the veneer
count with a more normal-sized kernel.

Cheers
---Dave