Good evening. Linux kernels from 6.7 upwards (including 6.8rc) appear to have broken PE section alignment in their EFI stub. Up to 6.6, we see monotonically increasing and contiguous VMA and LMA, as expected for a well-formed PE/COFF file. In 6.7 and 6.8 these addresses basically jump around all over the place. At least one loader which is believed to be enforcing strong but reasonable rules on PE section layout refuses to load these: https://github.com/acidanthera/bugtracker/issues/2371#issuecomment-1925801292 objdumps of some example kernels (two good, three bad) follow: $ objdump -h vmlinuz-5.15.0-92-generic vmlinuz-5.15.0-92-generic: file format pei-x86-64 Sections: Idx Name Size VMA LMA File off Algn 0 .setup 00003bc0 0000000001000200 0000000001000200 00000200 2**4 CONTENTS, ALLOC, LOAD, READONLY, CODE 1 .reloc 00000020 0000000001003dc0 0000000001003dc0 00003dc0 2**0 CONTENTS, ALLOC, LOAD, READONLY, DATA 2 .compat 00000020 0000000001003de0 0000000001003de0 00003de0 2**0 CONTENTS, ALLOC, LOAD, READONLY, DATA 3 .text 00b0f4c0 0000000001003e00 0000000001003e00 00003e00 2**4 CONTENTS, ALLOC, LOAD, READONLY, CODE $ objdump -h vmlinuz-6.6.11-zabbly+ vmlinuz-6.6.11-zabbly+: file format pei-x86-64 Sections: Idx Name Size VMA LMA File off Algn 0 .setup 00003dc0 0000000001000200 0000000001000200 00000200 2**4 CONTENTS, ALLOC, LOAD, READONLY, CODE 1 .reloc 00000020 0000000001003fc0 0000000001003fc0 00003fc0 2**0 CONTENTS, ALLOC, LOAD, READONLY, DATA 2 .compat 00000020 0000000001003fe0 0000000001003fe0 00003fe0 2**0 CONTENTS, ALLOC, LOAD, READONLY, DATA 3 .text 00d6e400 0000000001004000 0000000001004000 00004000 2**4 CONTENTS, ALLOC, LOAD, READONLY, CODE $ objdump -h vmlinuz-6.7.3-3-liquorix-amd64 vmlinuz-6.7.3-3-liquorix-amd64: file format pei-x86-64 Sections: Idx Name Size VMA LMA File off Algn 0 .setup 00003000 0000000000001000 0000000000001000 00001000 2**2 CONTENTS, ALLOC, LOAD, READONLY, DATA 1 .compat 00000008 0000000000c0e000 0000000000c0e000 00004000 2**2 CONTENTS, ALLOC, LOAD, READONLY, DATA 2 .text 00baa000 0000000000005000 0000000000005000 00005000 2**4 CONTENTS, ALLOC, LOAD, READONLY, CODE 3 .data 00001200 0000000000baf000 0000000000baf000 00baf000 2**4 CONTENTS, ALLOC, LOAD, DATA $ objdump -h vmlinuz-6.7.3-zabbly+ vmlinuz-6.7.3-zabbly+: file format pei-x86-64 Sections: Idx Name Size VMA LMA File off Algn 0 .setup 00003000 0000000000001000 0000000000001000 00001000 2**2 CONTENTS, ALLOC, LOAD, READONLY, DATA 1 .compat 00000008 0000000000df0000 0000000000df0000 00004000 2**2 CONTENTS, ALLOC, LOAD, READONLY, DATA 2 .text 00d84000 0000000000005000 0000000000005000 00005000 2**4 CONTENTS, ALLOC, LOAD, READONLY, CODE 3 .data 00001200 0000000000d89000 0000000000d89000 00d89000 2**4 CONTENTS, ALLOC, LOAD, DATA $ objdump -h vmlinuz-6.8.0-0.rc3.225.vanilla.fc39.x86_64 vmlinuz-6.8.0-0.rc3.225.vanilla.fc39.x86_64: file format pei-x86-64 Sections: Idx Name Size VMA LMA File off Algn 0 .setup 00003000 0000000000001000 0000000000001000 00001000 2**2 CONTENTS, ALLOC, LOAD, READONLY, DATA 1 .compat 00000008 0000000000e8b000 0000000000e8b000 00004000 2**2 CONTENTS, ALLOC, LOAD, READONLY, DATA 2 .text 00e1f000 0000000000005000 0000000000005000 00005000 2**4 CONTENTS, ALLOC, LOAD, READONLY, CODE 3 .data 00001200 0000000000e24000 0000000000e24000 00e24000 2**4 CONTENTS, ALLOC, LOAD, DATA $
