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Petr Pavlu 9d9173e9ce x86/build: Avoid relocation information in final vmlinux
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 |

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@suse.com>
Signed-off-by: Borislav Petkov (AMD) <bp@alien8.de>
Tested-by: Nick Desaulniers <ndesaulniers@google.com>
Link: https://lore.kernel.org/r/20220927084632.14531-1-petr.pavlu@suse.com
2023-06-14 19:54:40 +02:00
Documentation ARM: SoC fixes for 6.4, part 2 2023-06-10 13:01:09 -07:00
LICENSES LICENSES: Add the copyleft-next-0.3.1 license 2022-11-08 15:44:01 +01:00
arch x86/build: Avoid relocation information in final vmlinux 2023-06-14 19:54:40 +02:00
block blk-mq: fix blk_mq_hw_ctx active request accounting 2023-06-03 17:20:00 -06:00
certs KEYS: Add missing function documentation 2023-04-24 16:15:52 +03:00
crypto KEYS: asymmetric: Copy sig and digest in public_key_verify_signature() 2023-06-02 15:36:23 +02:00
drivers Biggest news is that Andi Shyti steps in for maintaining the controller 2023-06-10 13:36:07 -07:00
fs five smb3 server fixes, all also for stable 2023-06-11 10:07:35 -07:00
include ARM: SoC fixes for 6.4, part 2 2023-06-10 13:01:09 -07:00
init Objtool changes for v6.4: 2023-04-28 14:02:54 -07:00
io_uring io_uring: undeprecate epoll_ctl support 2023-05-26 20:22:41 -06:00
ipc Merge branch 'work.namespace' of git://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/viro/vfs 2023-02-24 19:20:07 -08:00
kernel virtio,vhost,vdpa: bugfixes 2023-06-09 11:04:08 -07:00
lib Networking fixes for 6.4-rc6, including fixes from can, wifi, netfilter, 2023-06-08 09:27:19 -07:00
mm mm: page_table_check: Ensure user pages are not slab pages 2023-05-29 16:14:28 +01:00
net Networking fixes for 6.4-rc6, including fixes from can, wifi, netfilter, 2023-06-08 09:27:19 -07:00
rust Rust changes for v6.4 2023-04-30 11:20:22 -07:00
samples samples/bpf: Drop unnecessary fallthrough 2023-05-16 19:44:05 +02:00
scripts Locking changes in v6.4: 2023-05-05 12:56:55 -07:00
security selinux: don't use make's grouped targets feature yet 2023-06-01 13:56:13 -04:00
sound ALSA: hda/realtek: Enable 4 amplifiers instead of 2 on a HP platform 2023-06-06 17:44:24 +02:00
tools virtio,vhost,vdpa: bugfixes 2023-06-09 11:04:08 -07:00
usr initramfs: Check negative timestamp to prevent broken cpio archive 2023-04-16 17:37:01 +09:00
virt KVM: Fix vcpu_array[0] races 2023-05-19 13:56:26 -04:00
.clang-format cxl for v6.4 2023-04-30 11:51:51 -07:00
.cocciconfig
.get_maintainer.ignore get_maintainer: add Alan to .get_maintainer.ignore 2022-08-20 15:17:44 -07:00
.gitattributes .gitattributes: use 'dts' diff driver for *.dtso files 2023-02-26 15:28:23 +09:00
.gitignore linux-kselftest-kunit-6.4-rc1 2023-04-24 12:31:32 -07:00
.mailmap mailmap: add entries for Nikolay Aleksandrov 2023-05-17 09:35:05 +01:00
.rustfmt.toml rust: add `.rustfmt.toml` 2022-09-28 09:02:20 +02:00
COPYING COPYING: state that all contributions really are covered by this file 2020-02-10 13:32:20 -08:00
CREDITS MAINTAINERS: sctp: move Neil to CREDITS 2023-05-12 08:51:32 +01:00
Kbuild Kbuild updates for v6.1 2022-10-10 12:00:45 -07:00
Kconfig kbuild: ensure full rebuild when the compiler is updated 2020-05-12 13:28:33 +09:00
MAINTAINERS Biggest news is that Andi Shyti steps in for maintaining the controller 2023-06-10 13:36:07 -07:00
Makefile Linux 6.4-rc6 2023-06-11 14:35:30 -07:00
README Drop all 00-INDEX files from Documentation/ 2018-09-09 15:08:58 -06:00

README

Linux kernel
============

There are several guides for kernel developers and users. These guides can
be rendered in a number of formats, like HTML and PDF. Please read
Documentation/admin-guide/README.rst first.

In order to build the documentation, use ``make htmldocs`` or
``make pdfdocs``.  The formatted documentation can also be read online at:

    https://www.kernel.org/doc/html/latest/

There are various text files in the Documentation/ subdirectory,
several of them using the Restructured Text markup notation.

Please read the Documentation/process/changes.rst file, as it contains the
requirements for building and running the kernel, and information about
the problems which may result by upgrading your kernel.