Re: [PATCH] i386: vmlinux.lds.S Distinguish absolute symbols

[ebiederm@xmission.com (Eric W. Biederman)]

Sam Ravnborg <sam@ravnborg.org> writes:

>  >
>> > I recall that when Kai Germaschewski long time ago started the
>> > unification of the vmlinux.lds files some people had boot problems
>> > exactly because the label was defined inside the section and therefore
>> > ld caused it to have another value as if it was placed outside the
>> > section.
>> 
>> I remember seeing something like that.  I don't know if those problems
>> apply to a modern ld, but it is certainly worth looking into.
> I was googling a bit with no luck.
> But apperantly looking at include/asm-generic/vmlinux.lds.h
> I'm utterly wrong. It was the other way around that caused problems.

Thanks for doing the research.

> Placing the labels outside {} sometimes gave an unaligned start address,
> whereas placing the label inside {} gave the correct address.
> At his also makes sense. If ld decide to align a section then it will do
> so after a label defined outside the section.

This also gives a solid argument for why doing this will be safe
as vmlinux.lds.h already does we can't be making things worse. :)

Eric