On 17 July 2014 16:09, Mark Salter <msalter@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote: > On Wed, 2014-07-16 at 23:13 +0200, Ard Biesheuvel wrote: >> On 16 July 2014 23:03, Mark Salter <msalter@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote: >> > On Wed, 2014-07-16 at 22:38 +0200, Ard Biesheuvel wrote: >> >> On 16 July 2014 21:45, Mark Salter <msalter@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote: >> >> > On Wed, 2014-07-16 at 16:53 +0100, Mark Rutland wrote: >> >> >> On Wed, Jul 16, 2014 at 03:51:37PM +0100, Mark Salter wrote: >> >> >> > On Tue, 2014-07-15 at 12:58 +0200, Ard Biesheuvel wrote: >> >> >> > > After the EFI stub has done its business, it jumps into the kernel by branching >> >> >> > > to offset #0 of the loaded Image, which is where it expects to find the header >> >> >> > > containing a 'branch to stext' instruction. >> >> >> > > >> >> >> > > However, the header is not covered by any PE/COFF section, so the header may >> >> >> > > not actually be loaded at the expected offset. So instead, jump to 'stext' >> >> >> > > directly, which is at the base of the PE/COFF .text section, by supplying a >> >> >> > > symbol 'stext_offset' to efi-entry.o which contains the relative offset of >> >> >> > > stext into the Image. Also replace other open coded calculations of the same >> >> >> > > value with a reference to 'stext_offset' >> >> >> > >> >> >> > Have you actually seen a situation where the header isn't there? >> >> >> > Isn't the kernel header actually part of the pe/coff file and >> >> >> > firmware loads the whole file into RAM? >> >> >> >> >> >> From my understanding of Ard's earlier comments, this part isn't >> >> >> guaranteed per the UEFI spec. >> >> >> >> >> >> I would rather we weren't relying on implementation details. >> >> >> >> >> > >> >> > Could be. I didn't see anything about it in the UEFI spec, but I >> >> > probably wasn't exhaustive in my search. In any case, there's at >> >> > least one other place broken if the kernel header isn't included >> >> > in the loaded image. >> >> > >> >> >> >> I have not been able to find anything in the PE/COFF documents that >> >> tells you what to put in memory areas that are not covered by a >> >> section. Expecting the header to be there is indeed relying on an >> >> implementation detail, which seems risky. >> >> And indeed, if there are any other (non EFI related) uses of header >> >> fields in the kernel, it would be good to have a look at those well, >> > >> > I think we need to come up with a loader which does load an image >> > without kernel header so that we can test. Otherwise, we'll probably >> > end up with buggy code anyway. The stub code assumes the the loaded >> > image pointed to by the system table is the whole image. Seems like >> > we'd need to add code to determine if it is whole kernel image or >> > image without initial header. Stub would have to handle both cases. >> > For instance, one case would want image placed at 2MiB+TEXT_OFFSET, >> > other case would want 2MiB+TEXT_OFFSET+sizeof(kernel header). >> > >> >> No, this has nothing to do with misaligned data. >> >> The PE/COFF .text section does not start at virtual offset #0 but at >> virtual offset 'stext - efi_head'. >> In other words, there is a hole in the virtual image where the header >> is supposed to be. >> So if there is no PE/COFF section describing what data should be put >> at offset #0 by the loader, we can't assume the header is there, even >> if ImageBase does start at #0 > > I get that. You're supposing UEFI will always allocate memory for the > full image, but only sometimes copy the PE/COFF headers. I can see your > point from a PE/COFF perspective, but not so much from the UEFI spec > perspective where the language leads me to think it treats the PE/COFF > images as one unit wrt loading. In any case, it really isn't worth > arguing about. I don't have any objection to the patch since it won't > break anything from my perspective and it'll protect against breakage > which could possibly occur with some firmware implementations. > I am reviving this old thread because it appears we may have seen an issue involving shim and GRUB where data not covered by any loadable PE/COFF section was not actually loaded to memory. In this case, it was the ".reloc" section, not the header but the conclusion should be the same. @Peter: this is a second-hand account so perhaps you could fill in with some details? Original thread is here: http://marc.info/?l=linux-arm-kernel&m=140542202520933&w=2 -- Ard. -- To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-efi" in the body of a message to majordomo@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html
