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Date:   Mon, 24 Feb 2020 13:12:09 -0800
From:   Fangrui Song <maskray@google.com>
To:     Arvind Sankar <nivedita@alum.mit.edu>
Cc:     Nick Desaulniers <ndesaulniers@google.com>,
        Borislav Petkov <bp@alien8.de>,
        Nathan Chancellor <natechancellor@gmail.com>,
        Thomas Gleixner <tglx@linutronix.de>,
        Ingo Molnar <mingo@redhat.com>,
        "H. Peter Anvin" <hpa@zytor.com>,
        "maintainer:X86 ARCHITECTURE (32-BIT AND 64-BIT)" <x86@kernel.org>,
        LKML <linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org>,
        clang-built-linux <clang-built-linux@googlegroups.com>,
        Michael Matz <matz@suse.de>, Kees Cook <keescook@chromium.org>
Subject: Re: [PATCH 1/2] arch/x86: Use -fno-asynchronous-unwind-tables to
 suppress .eh_frame sections
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On 2020-02-24, Arvind Sankar wrote:
>On Mon, Feb 24, 2020 at 12:33:49PM -0800, Nick Desaulniers wrote:
>> On Sun, Feb 23, 2020 at 11:37 AM Arvind Sankar <nivedita@alum.mit.edu> wrote:
>> >
>> > While discussing a patch to discard .eh_frame from the compressed
>> > vmlinux using the linker script, Fangrui Song pointed out [1] that these
>> > sections shouldn't exist in the first place because arch/x86/Makefile
>> > uses -fno-asynchronous-unwind-tables.
>>
>> Another benefit is that -fno-asynchronous-unwind-tables may help
>> reduce the size of .text!
>> https://stackoverflow.com/a/26302715/1027966
>
>Hm I don't see any change in .text size.
>> > diff --git a/drivers/firmware/efi/libstub/Makefile b/drivers/firmware/efi/libstub/Makefile
>> > index 98a81576213d..a1140c4ee478 100644
>> > --- a/drivers/firmware/efi/libstub/Makefile
>> > +++ b/drivers/firmware/efi/libstub/Makefile
>> > @@ -12,7 +12,8 @@ cflags-$(CONFIG_X86)          += -m$(BITS) -D__KERNEL__ -O2 \
>> >                                    -mno-mmx -mno-sse -fshort-wchar \
>> >                                    -Wno-pointer-sign \
>> >                                    $(call cc-disable-warning, address-of-packed-member) \
>> > -                                  $(call cc-disable-warning, gnu)
>> > +                                  $(call cc-disable-warning, gnu) \
>> > +                                  -fno-asynchronous-unwind-tables
>>
>> I think we want to add this flag a little lower, line 27 has:
>>
>> KBUILD_CFLAGS     := $(cflags-y) -DDISABLE_BRANCH_PROFILING \
>>
>> so the `cflags-y` variable you modify in this hunk will only set
>> -fno-asynchronous-unwind-tables for CONFIG_X86, which I don't think is
>> intentional.  Though when I run
>
>It is intentional -- the other case is that we're building for ARM,
>which only filters out the regular KBUILD_CFLAGS, so adding the flag for
>it should not be necessary. The cflags for ARM are constructed by
>manipulating KBUILD_CFLAGS. Besides it may or may not want unwind
>tables. 32-bit ARM appears to have an option to enable -funwind-tables.

clang (as of today) has not implemented the
-funwind-tables/-fasynchronous-unwind-tables distinction as GCC does..
(probably because not many people care..)

>>
>> $ llvm-readelf -S drivers/firmware/efi/libstub/lib.a | grep eh_frame
>>
>> after doing an x86_64 defconfig, I don't get any hits. Do you observe
>> .eh_frame sections on any of these objects in this dir? (I'm fine
>> adding it to be safe, but I'm curious why I'm not seeing any
>> .eh_frame)
>>
>
>You mean before this patch, right? I see hits on every .o file in there
>(compiling with gcc 9.2.0).
>
>> >
>> >  # arm64 uses the full KBUILD_CFLAGS so it's necessary to explicitly
>> >  # disable the stackleak plugin
>> > --
>> > 2.24.1
>> >