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Re: Preventing preemption of 'protected' symbols in GNU ld 2.26


On Mon, Mar 28, 2016 at 4:21 PM, Alan Modra <amodra@gmail.com> wrote:
> On Mon, Mar 28, 2016 at 03:38:01PM -0700, Cary Coutant wrote:
>> >>> Did you look at what the costs were in startup time and dirty pages by using
>> >>> copy relocations? What do you do if the size of the definition changes in a
>> >>> new version of the library?
>> >>
>> >> There wouldn't be a measurable cost in dirty pages; the copied objects
>> >> are simply allocated in bss in the executable.
>> >
>> > Wouldn't references to the symbol from within the .so need to be relocated to reference the now-canonical copy in the executable?
>>
>> No, references from within the .so would have always used the GOT.
>> Non-protected global symbols in a shared library are still
>> pre-emptible, so they are always indirect, and there's always a
>> dynamic relocation for the GOT entry. Whether the prevailing
>> definition winds up in the executable or the shared library, the
>> dynamic loader still has to bind the symbol and apply the relocation.
>
> HJ's changes to protected visibility meant compiler changes so that
> protected visibility in shared libraries is no longer seen as local.
> So yes, protected visibility symbols in shared libraries now go
> through the GOT.  Prior to his changes, they were optimized to a
> pc-relative access.  Joe is correct in pointing out that shared
> libraries needed a change.  Bad luck if you're using an older
> compiler.  Also bad luck if you want to use protected visibility to
> optimize your shared library.
>
> HJ also made glibc ld.so changes to ensure the semantics of protected
> visibility symbols remain unchanged when multiple shared libraries
> define the same protected visibility symbol.
>
> Apparently most people in the gcc and glibc communities saw these
> toolchain modifications as fiendishly clever.
>

As I said before, copy relocation and protected symbol are fundamentally
incompatible.  Since copy relocation is the part of x86 psABIs, I updated
GCC, glibc and ld to make protected symbol to work with copy relocation.
That is protected symbol may be external, but won't be preempted.  The
price I paid is that protected symbol won't be accessed via PC-relative
relocation within the shared object.  To access protected symbol via
PC-relative relocation within the shared object, we need to disable copy
relocation in executable, which is a psABI change.  That is why I proposed
to mark the object as such so that we won't get surprise at run-time.

-- 
H.J.


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