Re: [PATCH] Drop ELF notes from non-EFI binary too

["Marek Marczykowski-Górecki" <marmarek@invisiblethingslab.com>]

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On Mon, Feb 27, 2023 at 11:28:28AM +0100, Jan Beulich wrote:
> On 26.02.2023 00:56, Marek Marczykowski-Górecki wrote:
> > The ELF is repacked from from 64bit to 32bit. With CET-related notes,
> > which use 64bit fields, this results in 32bit binary with corrupted
> > notes. Drop them all (except build-id and PVH note retained
> > explicitly).
> > 
> > Suggested-by: Jan Beulich <jbeulich@suse.com>
> 
> Perhaps a misunderstanding: Yes, I did suggest this as a possibility,
> but I didn't really mean we actually do so. At the very least not
> without further clarifying what the cons of doing so are. The notes,
> after all, are actually valid in xen-syms; they become bogus in the
> course of mkelf32's processing.
> 
> > --- a/xen/arch/x86/xen.lds.S
> > +++ b/xen/arch/x86/xen.lds.S
> > @@ -192,13 +192,6 @@ SECTIONS
> >  #endif
> >  #endif
> >  
> > -#ifndef EFI
> > -  /* Retain these just for the purpose of possible analysis tools. */
> > -  DECL_SECTION(.note) {
> > -       *(.note.*)
> > -  } PHDR(note) PHDR(text)
> > -#endif
> > -
> >    _erodata = .;
> >  
> >    . = ALIGN(SECTION_ALIGN);
> 
> Is this sufficient? .note.* isn't part of DISCARD_SECTIONS except for
> xen.efi. I would expect it needs to move there from DISCARD_EFI_SECTIONS.
> Otherwise, aiui, the linker's orphan section placement will kick in. 

What supposedly happens then? By looking at binary produced with this
patch, I don't see other .note sections included.

> Yet
> at that point you'd also affect Arm and RISC-V (which, interestingly,
> don't place .note.* anywhere at all right now, afaics).

That's interesting observation. For RISC-V, I'm not surprised given how
fresh it is in tree, but if Arm doesn't need it either, maybe adding to
DISCARD_SECTIONS isn't such a bad idea?

-- 
Best Regards,
Marek Marczykowski-Górecki
Invisible Things Lab

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