linux-kernel - [PATCH 2/2] Discard .note.gnu.property sections in generic NOTES

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Date:   Tue, 28 Apr 2020 06:21:05 -0700
From:   "H.J. Lu" <hjl.tools@...il.com>
To:     linux-kernel@...r.kernel.org
Cc:     Yu-cheng Yu <yu-cheng.yu@...el.com>, Arnd Bergmann <arnd@...db.de>,
        linux-arch@...r.kernel.org, Michael Ellerman <mpe@...erman.id.au>,
        Benjamin Herrenschmidt <benh@...nel.crashing.org>,
        Paul Mackerras <paulus@...ba.org>,
        Kees Cook <keescook@...omium.org>,
        Borislav Petkov <bp@...e.de>,
        "Naveen N . Rao" <naveen.n.rao@...ux.vnet.ibm.com>,
        linuxppc-dev@...ts.ozlabs.org
Subject: [PATCH 2/2] Discard .note.gnu.property sections in generic NOTES

With the command-line option, -mx86-used-note=yes, the x86 assembler
in binutils 2.32 and above generates a program property note in a note
section, .note.gnu.property, to encode used x86 ISAs and features.  But
kernel linker script only contains a single NOTE segment:

PHDRS {
 text PT_LOAD FLAGS(5);
 data PT_LOAD FLAGS(6);
 percpu PT_LOAD FLAGS(6);
 init PT_LOAD FLAGS(7);
 note PT_NOTE FLAGS(0);
}
SECTIONS
{
...
 .notes : AT(ADDR(.notes) - 0xffffffff80000000) { __start_notes = .; KEEP(*(.not
e.*)) __stop_notes = .; } :text :note
...
}

The NOTE segment generated by kernel linker script is aligned to 4 bytes.
But .note.gnu.property section must be aligned to 8 bytes on x86-64 and
we get

[hjl@...-skx-1 linux]$ readelf -n vmlinux

Displaying notes found in: .notes
  Owner                Data size Description
  Xen                  0x00000006 Unknown note type: (0x00000006)
   description data: 6c 69 6e 75 78 00
  Xen                  0x00000004 Unknown note type: (0x00000007)
   description data: 32 2e 36 00
  xen-3.0              0x00000005 Unknown note type: (0x006e6558)
   description data: 08 00 00 00 03
readelf: Warning: note with invalid namesz and/or descsz found at offset 0x50
readelf: Warning:  type: 0xffffffff, namesize: 0x006e6558, descsize:
0x80000000, alignment: 8
[hjl@...-skx-1 linux]$

Since note.gnu.property section in kernel image is never used, this patch
discards .note.gnu.property sections in kernel linker script by adding

/DISCARD/ : {
  *(.note.gnu.property)
}

before kernel NOTE segment in generic NOTES.

Signed-off-by: H.J. Lu <hjl.tools@...il.com>
Reviewed-by: Kees Cook <keescook@...omium.org>
---
 include/asm-generic/vmlinux.lds.h | 7 +++++++
 1 file changed, 7 insertions(+)

diff --git a/include/asm-generic/vmlinux.lds.h b/include/asm-generic/vmlinux.lds.h
index 71e387a5fe90..95cd678428f4 100644
--- a/include/asm-generic/vmlinux.lds.h
+++ b/include/asm-generic/vmlinux.lds.h
@@ -833,7 +833,14 @@
 #define TRACEDATA
 #endif
 
+/*
+ * Discard .note.gnu.property sections which are unused and have
+ * different alignment requirement from kernel note sections.
+ */
 #define NOTES								\
+	/DISCARD/ : {							\
+		*(.note.gnu.property)					\
+	}								\
 	.notes : AT(ADDR(.notes) - LOAD_OFFSET) {			\
 		__start_notes = .;					\
 		KEEP(*(.note.*))					\
-- 
2.25.4