[PATCH dwarves v2] dwarf_loader: Handle DW_AT_location attrs containing DW_OP_plus_uconst

Yao Zi
2025-12-13T08:28:33Z

LLVM has a GlobalMerge pass, which tries to group multiple global
variables together and address them with through a single register with
offsets coded in instructions, to reduce register pressure. Address of
symbols transformed by the pass may be represented by an DWARF
expression consisting of DW_OP_addrx and DW_OP_plus_uconst, which
naturally matches the way a merged variable is addressed.

However, our dwarf_loader currently ignores anything but the first in
the location expression, including the DW_OP_plus_uconst atom, which
appears the second operation in this case. This could result in broken
BTF information produced by pahole, where several merged symbols are
given the same offset, even though in fact they don't overlap.

LLVM has enabled MergeGlobal pass for PowerPC[1] and RISC-V[2] by
default since version 20, let's handle DW_OP_plus_uconst operations in
DW_AT_location attributes correctly to ensure correct BTF could be
produced for LLVM-built kernels.

Fixes: a6ea527aab91 ("variable: Add ->addr member")
Reported-by: q66 <me@q66.moe>
Closes: https://github.com/ClangBuiltLinux/linux/issues/2089
Link: https://github.com/llvm/llvm-project/commit/aaa37d6755e6 # [1]
Link: https://github.com/llvm/llvm-project/commit/9d02264b03ea # [2]
Signed-off-by: Yao Zi <me@ziyao.cc>
---

The problem is found by several distros building Linux kernel with LLVM
and BTF enabled, after upgrading to LLVM 20 or later, kernels built for
RISC-V and PowerPC issue errors like

[ 1.296358] BPF: type_id=4457 offset=4224 size=8
[ 1.296767] BPF:
[ 1.296919] BPF: Invalid offset

on startup, and loading any modules fails with -EINVAL unless
CONFIG_MODULE_ALLOW_BTF_MISMATCH is turned on,

# insmod tun.ko
[ 12.892421] failed to validate module [tun] BTF: -22
[ 12.936971] failed to validate module [tun] BTF: -22
insmod: can't insert 'tun.ko': Invalid argument

By comparing DWARF dump and BTF dump, it's found BTF contains symbols
with the same offset,

type_id=4148 offset=4208 size=8 (VAR 'vector_misaligned_access')
type_id=4147 offset=4208 size=8 (VAR 'misaligned_access_speed')

while the same symbols are described with different DW_AT_location
attributes,

0x0011ade7: DW_TAG_variable
DW_AT_name ("misaligned_access_speed")
DW_AT_type (0x0011adf2 "long")
DW_AT_decl_file ("...")
DW_AT_external (true)
DW_AT_decl_line (24)
DW_AT_location (DW_OP_addrx 0x0)

...

0x0011adf6: DW_TAG_variable
DW_AT_name ("vector_misaligned_access")
DW_AT_type (0x0011adf2 "long")
DW_AT_external (true)
DW_AT_decl_file ("...")
DW_AT_decl_line (25)
DW_AT_location (DW_OP_addrx 0x0, DW_OP_plus_uconst 0x8)

For more detailed analysis and kernel config for reproducing the issue,
please refer to the Closes link. Thanks for your time and review.

Changed from v1
- Add missing dereference to *addr
- Change my mail address to me@ziyao.cc
- Link to v1: https://lore.kernel.org/dwarves/20251130032113.4938-2-ziyao@disroot.org/

dwarf_loader.c | 5 +++++
1 file changed, 5 insertions(+)

diff --git a/dwarf_loader.c b/dwarf_loader.c
index 79be3f516a26..77aab8a0960b 100644
--- a/dwarf_loader.c
+++ b/dwarf_loader.c
@@ -708,6 +708,11 @@ static enum vscope dwarf__location(Dwarf_Die *die, uint64_t *addr, struct locati
case DW_OP_addrx:
scope = VSCOPE_GLOBAL;
*addr = expr[0].number;
+
+ if (location->exprlen == 2 &&
+ expr[1].atom == DW_OP_plus_uconst)
+ *addr += expr[1].number;
+
break;
case DW_OP_reg1 ... DW_OP_reg31:
case DW_OP_breg0 ... DW_OP_breg31:
--
2.51.2