[v6] x86: Avoid relocation information in final vmlinux
Commit Message
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>
Tested-by: Nick Desaulniers <ndesaulniers@google.com>
---
Changes since v5 [1]:
- Put vmlinux.relocs back into arch/x86/boot/compressed.
- Wrap the long objcopy command line.
Changes since v4 [2]:
- Update the example target which is mentioned in the patch description
to collect vmlinux from binrpm-pkg to tar-pkg, to reflect fc8c2d8ff206
("kbuild: Stop including vmlinux.bz2 in the rpm's").
Changes since v3 [3]:
- Update the Kbuild.include path in arch/x86/Makefile.postlink to work
after 67d7c3023a67 ("kbuild: remove --include-dir MAKEFLAG from top
Makefile").
Changes since v2 [4]:
- Ignore only the moved vmlinux.relocs, add it to .gitignore and
Documentation/dontdiff.
- Clean up the patch description.
Changes since v1 [5]:
- Fix the command to remove relocations to work with llvm-objcopy too.
[1] https://lore.kernel.org/lkml/20230320121006.4863-1-petr.pavlu@suse.com/
[2] https://lore.kernel.org/lkml/20230227131829.26824-1-petr.pavlu@suse.com/
[3] https://lore.kernel.org/lkml/20221211141227.7622-1-petr.pavlu@suse.com/
[4] https://lore.kernel.org/lkml/20220927084632.14531-1-petr.pavlu@suse.com/
[5] https://lore.kernel.org/lkml/20220913132911.6850-1-petr.pavlu@suse.com/
arch/x86/Makefile.postlink | 47 +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
arch/x86/boot/compressed/Makefile | 8 ++----
2 files changed, 50 insertions(+), 5 deletions(-)
create mode 100644 arch/x86/Makefile.postlink
new file mode 100644
@@ -0,0 +1,47 @@
+# SPDX-License-Identifier: GPL-2.0
+# ===========================================================================
+# Post-link x86 pass
+# ===========================================================================
+#
+# 1. Separate relocations from vmlinux into vmlinux.relocs.
+# 2. Strip relocations from vmlinux.
+
+PHONY := __archpost
+__archpost:
+
+-include include/config/auto.conf
+include $(srctree)/scripts/Kbuild.include
+
+CMD_RELOCS = arch/x86/tools/relocs
+OUT_RELOCS = arch/x86/boot/compressed
+quiet_cmd_relocs = RELOCS $(OUT_RELOCS)/$@.relocs
+ cmd_relocs = \
+ mkdir -p $(OUT_RELOCS); \
+ $(CMD_RELOCS) $@ > $(OUT_RELOCS)/$@.relocs; \
+ $(CMD_RELOCS) --abs-relocs $@
+
+quiet_cmd_strip_relocs = RSTRIP $@
+ cmd_strip_relocs = \
+ $(OBJCOPY) --remove-section='.rel.*' --remove-section='.rel__*' \
+ --remove-section='.rela.*' --remove-section='.rela__*' $@
+
+# `@true` prevents complaint when there is nothing to be done
+
+vmlinux: FORCE
+ @true
+ifeq ($(CONFIG_X86_NEED_RELOCS),y)
+ $(call cmd,relocs)
+ $(call cmd,strip_relocs)
+endif
+
+%.ko: FORCE
+ @true
+
+clean:
+ @rm -f $(OUT_RELOCS)/vmlinux.relocs
+
+PHONY += FORCE clean
+
+FORCE:
+
+.PHONY: $(PHONY)
@@ -121,11 +121,9 @@ $(obj)/vmlinux.bin: vmlinux FORCE
targets += $(patsubst $(obj)/%,%,$(vmlinux-objs-y)) vmlinux.bin.all vmlinux.relocs
-CMD_RELOCS = arch/x86/tools/relocs
-quiet_cmd_relocs = RELOCS $@
- cmd_relocs = $(CMD_RELOCS) $< > $@;$(CMD_RELOCS) --abs-relocs $<
-$(obj)/vmlinux.relocs: vmlinux FORCE
- $(call if_changed,relocs)
+# vmlinux.relocs is created by the vmlinux postlink step.
+$(obj)/vmlinux.relocs: vmlinux
+ @true
vmlinux.bin.all-y := $(obj)/vmlinux.bin
vmlinux.bin.all-$(CONFIG_X86_NEED_RELOCS) += $(obj)/vmlinux.relocs