Date:   Fri, 24 Mar 2023 11:30:46 +0100
From:   Petr Pavlu <petr.pavlu@...e.com>
To:     Nick Desaulniers <ndesaulniers@...gle.com>
Cc:     tglx@...utronix.de, mingo@...hat.com, bp@...en8.de,
        dave.hansen@...ux.intel.com, x86@...nel.org, hpa@...or.com,
        nathan@...nel.org, trix@...hat.com, corbet@....net,
        linux-kernel@...r.kernel.org,
        clang-built-linux <llvm@...ts.linux.dev>,
        linux-toolchains <linux-toolchains@...r.kernel.org>,
        Fangrui Song <maskray@...gle.com>
Subject: Re: [PATCH v5] x86: Avoid relocation information in final vmlinux

On 3/20/23 19:35, Nick Desaulniers wrote:
> On Mon, Mar 20, 2023 at 5:10 AM Petr Pavlu <petr.pavlu@...e.com> wrote:
>>
>> The Linux build process on x86 roughly consists of compiling all input
>> files, statically linking them into a vmlinux ELF file, and then taking
>> and turning this file into an actual bzImage bootable file.
>>
>> vmlinux has in this process two main purposes:
>> 1) It is an intermediate build target on the way to produce the final
>>    bootable image.
>> 2) It is a file that is expected to be used by debuggers and standard
>>    ELF tooling to work with the built kernel.
>>
>> For the second purpose, a vmlinux file is typically collected by various
>> package build recipes, such as distribution spec files, including the
>> kernel's own tar-pkg target.
>>
>> When building a kernel supporting KASLR with CONFIG_X86_NEED_RELOCS,
>> vmlinux contains also relocation information produced by using the
>> --emit-relocs linker option. This is utilized by subsequent build steps
>> to create vmlinux.relocs and produce a relocatable image. However, the
>> information is not needed by debuggers and other standard ELF tooling.
>>
>> The issue is then that the collected vmlinux file and hence distribution
>> packages end up unnecessarily large because of this extra data. The
>> following is a size comparison of vmlinux v6.0 with and without the
>> relocation information:
>> | Configuration      | With relocs | Stripped relocs |
>> | x86_64_defconfig   |       70 MB |           43 MB |
>> | +CONFIG_DEBUG_INFO |      818 MB |          367 MB |
> 
> Thanks for getting this to work with llvm-objcopy.  It's a pretty big
> win for us, especially for thin-lto builds which produce a ridiculous
> amount of debug info duplication (something I'm petitioning our DWARF
> folks to look into for DWARFv6) some measurements (all LLVM=1):
> 
> Before this patch:
> defconfig:
> 76M vmlinux
> DEBUG_INFO:
> 510M vmlinux
> DEBUG_INFO+LTO_CLANG_THIN:
> 796M vmlinux
> 
> after:
> defconfig:
> 48M vmlinux (-36.8%)
> DEBUG_INFO:
> 270M vmlinux (-47%)
> LTO_CLANG_THIN:
> 400M vmlinux (-49.8%)
> 
> So basically a 50% reduction in vmlinux size, depending on the precise
> configs selected. That's pretty great!
> 
> Android usually keeps around vmlinux artifacts as well as the
> compressed image in case we need to debug the image later, this should
> help us cut our storage costs for those quite a bit.  arm64 is more
> common for Android, but x86_64 is pretty helpful for a virtualized
> target; we do use it alot for first party development.
> 
> I also tested that I could still boot the result in QEMU, attach GDB,
> and still hit breakpoints in the resulting vmlinux.  I also tested
> that there were no more rel/rela sections missed in the resulting
> vmlinux images.
> 
> Tested-by: Nick Desaulniers <ndesaulniers@...gle.com>

Thanks for testing this change.

> 
> Some minor review comments below.
> 
> 
> I do also wonder if linkers have something like --emit-relocs, but the
> option to produce it in an additional file. That would help us avoid
> producing it only to split it out in the first place.

I'm afraid I'm not aware of such an option.

> 
>>
>> Optimize a resulting vmlinux by adding a postlink step that splits the
>> relocation information into vmlinux.relocs and then strips it from the
>> vmlinux binary.
>>
>> Signed-off-by: Petr Pavlu <petr.pavlu@...e.com>
>> ---
>>
>> Changes since v4 [1]:
>> - Update the example target which is mentioned in the patch description
>>   to collect vmlinux from binrpm-pkg to tar-pkg, to reflect fc8c2d8ff206
>>   ("kbuild: Stop including vmlinux.bz2 in the rpm's").
>>
>> Changes since v3 [2]:
>> - Update the Kbuild.include path in arch/x86/Makefile.postlink to work
>>   after 67d7c3023a67 ("kbuild: remove --include-dir MAKEFLAG from top
>>   Makefile").
>>
>> Changes since v2 [3]:
>> - Ignore only the moved vmlinux.relocs, add it to .gitignore and
>>   Documentation/dontdiff.
>> - Clean up the patch description.
>>
>> Changes since v1 [4]:
>> - Fix the command to remove relocations to work with llvm-objcopy too.
>>
>> [1] https://lore.kernel.org/lkml/20230227131829.26824-1-petr.pavlu@suse.com/
>> [2] https://lore.kernel.org/lkml/20221211141227.7622-1-petr.pavlu@suse.com/
>> [3] https://lore.kernel.org/lkml/20220927084632.14531-1-petr.pavlu@suse.com/
>> [4] https://lore.kernel.org/lkml/20220913132911.6850-1-petr.pavlu@suse.com/
>>
>>  .gitignore                          |  1 +
>>  Documentation/dontdiff              |  1 +
>>  arch/x86/Makefile.postlink          | 41 +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
>>  arch/x86/boot/compressed/.gitignore |  1 -
>>  arch/x86/boot/compressed/Makefile   | 10 +++----
>>  5 files changed, 47 insertions(+), 7 deletions(-)
>>  create mode 100644 arch/x86/Makefile.postlink
>>
>> diff --git a/.gitignore b/.gitignore
>> index 70ec6037fa7a..9bafd3c6bb5f 100644
>> --- a/.gitignore
>> +++ b/.gitignore
>> @@ -65,6 +65,7 @@ modules.order
>>  /vmlinux
>>  /vmlinux.32
>>  /vmlinux.map
>> +/vmlinux.relocs
> 
> Why do you move this from the arch/x86/boot/compressed/ dir?

The idea was for Makefile.postlink to produce its output at own $(obj) level
which is essentially the top objtree directory. However, I can see the
argument to write vmlinux.relocs in the same directory where other related
output files are present.

> 
>>  /vmlinux.symvers
>>  /vmlinux-gdb.py
>>  /vmlinuz
>> diff --git a/Documentation/dontdiff b/Documentation/dontdiff
>> index 3c399f132e2d..a62ad01e6d11 100644
>> --- a/Documentation/dontdiff
>> +++ b/Documentation/dontdiff
>> @@ -254,6 +254,7 @@ vmlinux.aout
>>  vmlinux.bin.all
>>  vmlinux.lds
>>  vmlinux.map
>> +vmlinux.relocs
>>  vmlinux.symvers
>>  vmlinuz
>>  voffset.h
>> diff --git a/arch/x86/Makefile.postlink b/arch/x86/Makefile.postlink
>> new file mode 100644
>> index 000000000000..195af937aa4d
>> --- /dev/null
>> +++ b/arch/x86/Makefile.postlink
>> @@ -0,0 +1,41 @@
>> +# SPDX-License-Identifier: GPL-2.0
>> +# ===========================================================================
>> +# Post-link x86 pass
>> +# ===========================================================================
>> +#
>> +# 1. Separate relocations from vmlinux into vmlinux.relocs.
>> +# 2. Strip relocations from vmlinux.
>> +
>> +PHONY := __archpost
>> +__archpost:
>> +
>> +-include include/config/auto.conf
>> +include $(srctree)/scripts/Kbuild.include
>> +
>> +CMD_RELOCS = arch/x86/tools/relocs
>> +quiet_cmd_relocs = RELOCS  $@...locs
>> +      cmd_relocs = $(CMD_RELOCS) $@ > $@...locs;$(CMD_RELOCS) --abs-relocs $@
>> +
>> +quiet_cmd_strip_relocs = RSTRIP  $@
>> +      cmd_strip_relocs = $(OBJCOPY) --remove-section='.rel.*' --remove-section='.rel__*' --remove-section='.rela.*' --remove-section='.rela__*' $@
> 
> This line is pretty long (146 chars), can you use \ here to wrap it?

Ack, I'll wrap it in a new version.

>> +
>> +# `@...e` prevents complaint when there is nothing to be done
>> +
>> +vmlinux: FORCE
>> +       @true
>> +ifeq ($(CONFIG_X86_NEED_RELOCS),y)
>> +       $(call cmd,relocs)
>> +       $(call cmd,strip_relocs)
>> +endif
>> +
>> +%.ko: FORCE
>> +       @true
>> +
>> +clean:
>> +       @rm -f vmlinux.relocs
>> +
>> +PHONY += FORCE clean
>> +
>> +FORCE:
>> +
>> +.PHONY: $(PHONY)
>> diff --git a/arch/x86/boot/compressed/.gitignore b/arch/x86/boot/compressed/.gitignore
>> index 25805199a506..b2968175fc27 100644
>> --- a/arch/x86/boot/compressed/.gitignore
>> +++ b/arch/x86/boot/compressed/.gitignore
>> @@ -1,7 +1,6 @@
>>  # SPDX-License-Identifier: GPL-2.0-only
>>  relocs
>>  vmlinux.bin.all
>> -vmlinux.relocs
>>  vmlinux.lds
>>  mkpiggy
>>  piggy.S
>> diff --git a/arch/x86/boot/compressed/Makefile b/arch/x86/boot/compressed/Makefile
>> index 6b6cfe607bdb..19d1fb601796 100644
>> --- a/arch/x86/boot/compressed/Makefile
>> +++ b/arch/x86/boot/compressed/Makefile
>> @@ -121,14 +121,12 @@ $(obj)/vmlinux.bin: vmlinux FORCE
>>
>>  targets += $(patsubst $(obj)/%,%,$(vmlinux-objs-y)) vmlinux.bin.all vmlinux.relocs
>>
>> -CMD_RELOCS = arch/x86/tools/relocs
>> -quiet_cmd_relocs = RELOCS  $@
>> -      cmd_relocs = $(CMD_RELOCS) $< > $@;$(CMD_RELOCS) --abs-relocs $<
>> -$(obj)/vmlinux.relocs: vmlinux FORCE
>> -       $(call if_changed,relocs)
>> +# vmlinux.relocs is created by the vmlinux postlink step.
>> +vmlinux.relocs: vmlinux
>> +       @true
>>
>>  vmlinux.bin.all-y := $(obj)/vmlinux.bin
>> -vmlinux.bin.all-$(CONFIG_X86_NEED_RELOCS) += $(obj)/vmlinux.relocs
>> +vmlinux.bin.all-$(CONFIG_X86_NEED_RELOCS) += vmlinux.relocs
> 
> Why do you remove $(obj) here? I'm guessing that's why you moved
> vmlinux.relocs between .gitignore files?

Yes, it is because this version of Makefile.postlink saves vmlinux.relocs in
the top objtree directory.

Thanks,
Petr

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