linux/arch
Mark Rutland a2c1d73b94 arm64: Update the Image header
Currently the kernel Image is stripped of everything past the initial
stack, and at runtime the memory is initialised and used by the kernel.
This makes the effective minimum memory footprint of the kernel larger
than the size of the loaded binary, though bootloaders have no mechanism
to identify how large this minimum memory footprint is. This makes it
difficult to choose safe locations to place both the kernel and other
binaries required at boot (DTB, initrd, etc), such that the kernel won't
clobber said binaries or other reserved memory during initialisation.

Additionally when big endian support was added the image load offset was
overlooked, and is currently of an arbitrary endianness, which makes it
difficult for bootloaders to make use of it. It seems that bootloaders
aren't respecting the image load offset at present anyway, and are
assuming that offset 0x80000 will always be correct.

This patch adds an effective image size to the kernel header which
describes the amount of memory from the start of the kernel Image binary
which the kernel expects to use before detecting memory and handling any
memory reservations. This can be used by bootloaders to choose suitable
locations to load the kernel and/or other binaries such that the kernel
will not clobber any memory unexpectedly. As before, memory reservations
are required to prevent the kernel from clobbering these locations
later.

Both the image load offset and the effective image size are forced to be
little-endian regardless of the native endianness of the kernel to
enable bootloaders to load a kernel of arbitrary endianness. Bootloaders
which wish to make use of the load offset can inspect the effective
image size field for a non-zero value to determine if the offset is of a
known endianness. To enable software to determine the endinanness of the
kernel as may be required for certain use-cases, a new flags field (also
little-endian) is added to the kernel header to export this information.

The documentation is updated to clarify these details. To discourage
future assumptions regarding the value of text_offset, the value at this
point in time is removed from the main flow of the documentation (though
kept as a compatibility note). Some minor formatting issues in the
documentation are also corrected.

Signed-off-by: Mark Rutland <mark.rutland@arm.com>
Acked-by: Tom Rini <trini@ti.com>
Cc: Geoff Levand <geoff@infradead.org>
Cc: Kevin Hilman <kevin.hilman@linaro.org>
Acked-by: Will Deacon <will.deacon@arm.com>
Signed-off-by: Catalin Marinas <catalin.marinas@arm.com>
2014-07-10 12:36:40 +01:00
..
alpha Merge commit '3cf2f34' into sched/core, to fix build error 2014-06-12 13:46:37 +02:00
arc ARC: [SMP] Enable icache coherency 2014-06-26 11:59:01 +05:30
arm ARM: SoC fixes for 3.16-rc 2014-07-05 16:57:12 -07:00
arm64 arm64: Update the Image header 2014-07-10 12:36:40 +01:00
avr32 Merge branch 'locking-core-for-linus' of git://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/tip/tip into next 2014-06-03 12:57:53 -07:00
blackfin blackfin updates for Linux 3.16 2014-06-12 20:08:47 -07:00
c6x DeviceTree for 3.16: 2014-06-04 10:02:38 -07:00
cris cris: update comments for generic idle conversion 2014-06-06 16:08:18 -07:00
frv sys_sgetmask/sys_ssetmask: add CONFIG_SGETMASK_SYSCALL 2014-06-04 16:54:14 -07:00
hexagon
ia64 ia64: arch/ia64/include/uapi/asm/fcntl.h needs personality.h 2014-06-23 16:47:44 -07:00
m32r
m68k Merge commit '3cf2f34' into sched/core, to fix build error 2014-06-12 13:46:37 +02:00
metag Merge commit '3cf2f34' into sched/core, to fix build error 2014-06-12 13:46:37 +02:00
microblaze Microblaze patches for 3.16-rc1 2014-06-05 16:15:33 -07:00
mips A bunch of one-liners (except the s390 one). 2014-07-01 09:27:34 -07:00
mn10300 sys_sgetmask/sys_ssetmask: add CONFIG_SGETMASK_SYSCALL 2014-06-04 16:54:14 -07:00
openrisc DeviceTree for 3.16: 2014-06-04 10:02:38 -07:00
parisc Merge commit '3cf2f34' into sched/core, to fix build error 2014-06-12 13:46:37 +02:00
powerpc powerpc: Don't skip ePAPR spin-table CPUs 2014-06-25 13:10:49 +10:00
s390 A bunch of one-liners (except the s390 one). 2014-07-01 09:27:34 -07:00
score
sh Merge commit '3cf2f34' into sched/core, to fix build error 2014-06-12 13:46:37 +02:00
sparc nmi: provide the option to issue an NMI back trace to every cpu but current 2014-06-23 16:47:44 -07:00
tile Merge commit '3cf2f34' into sched/core, to fix build error 2014-06-12 13:46:37 +02:00
um Merge branch 'kbuild' of git://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/mmarek/kbuild 2014-06-12 21:23:38 -07:00
unicore32 unicore32: Remove ARCH_HAS_CPUFREQ config option 2014-06-20 08:22:41 +08:00
x86 ptrace,x86: force IRET path after a ptrace_stop() 2014-07-03 17:27:23 -07:00
xtensa Merge commit '3cf2f34' into sched/core, to fix build error 2014-06-12 13:46:37 +02:00
.gitignore
Kconfig