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From:   Arvind Sankar <nivedita@alum.mit.edu>
Date:   Wed, 24 Jun 2020 13:11:21 -0400
To:     Fangrui Song <maskray@google.com>
Cc:     Arvind Sankar <nivedita@alum.mit.edu>,
        Kees Cook <keescook@chromium.org>,
        Will Deacon <will@kernel.org>,
        Catalin Marinas <catalin.marinas@arm.com>,
        Mark Rutland <mark.rutland@arm.com>,
        Ard Biesheuvel <ardb@kernel.org>,
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        James Morse <james.morse@arm.com>,
        Borislav Petkov <bp@suse.de>,
        Thomas Gleixner <tglx@linutronix.de>,
        Ingo Molnar <mingo@redhat.com>,
        Russell King <linux@armlinux.org.uk>,
        Masahiro Yamada <masahiroy@kernel.org>,
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        Nathan Chancellor <natechancellor@gmail.com>,
        Arnd Bergmann <arnd@arndb.de>, x86@kernel.org,
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        linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org
Subject: Re: [PATCH v3 2/9] vmlinux.lds.h: Add .symtab, .strtab, and
 .shstrtab to STABS_DEBUG
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On Wed, Jun 24, 2020 at 09:16:43AM -0700, Fangrui Song wrote:
> 
> On 2020-06-24, Arvind Sankar wrote:
> >On Tue, Jun 23, 2020 at 06:49:33PM -0700, Kees Cook wrote:
> >> When linking vmlinux with LLD, the synthetic sections .symtab, .strtab,
> >> and .shstrtab are listed as orphaned. Add them to the STABS_DEBUG section
> >> so there will be no warnings when --orphan-handling=warn is used more
> >> widely. (They are added above comment as it is the more common
> >
> >Nit 1: is "after .comment" better than "above comment"? It's above in the
> >sense of higher file offset, but it's below in readelf output.
> 
> I mean this order:)
> 
>    .comment
>    .symtab
>    .shstrtab
>    .strtab
> 
> This is the case in the absence of a linker script if at least one object file has .comment (mostly for GCC/clang version information) or the linker is LLD which adds a .comment
> 
> >Nit 2: These aren't actually debugging sections, no? Is it better to add
> >a new macro for it, and is there any plan to stop LLD from warning about
> >them?
> 
> https://reviews.llvm.org/D75149 "[ELF] --orphan-handling=: don't warn/error for unused synthesized sections"
> described that .symtab .shstrtab .strtab are different in GNU ld.
> Since many other GNU ld synthesized sections (.rela.dyn .plt ...) can be renamed or dropped
> via output section descriptions, I don't understand why the 3 sections
> can't be customized.

So IIUC, lld will now warn about .rela.dyn etc only if they're non-empty?

> 
> I created a feature request: https://sourceware.org/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=26168
> (If this is supported, it is a consistent behavior to warn for orphan
> .symtab/.strtab/.shstrtab
> 
> There may be 50% chance that the maintainer decides that "LLD diverges"
> I would disagree: there is no fundamental problems with .symtab/.strtab/.shstrtab which make them special in output section descriptions or orphan handling.)
> 

.shstrtab is a little special in that it can't be discarded if the ELF
file contains any sections at all. But yeah, there's no reason they
can't be renamed or placed in a custom location in the file.