From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 From: arnd@arndb.de (Arnd Bergmann) Date: Wed, 8 Jun 2011 11:23:59 +0200 Subject: Dynamic patching in discarded sections Message-ID: <201106081123.59414.arnd@arndb.de> To: linux-arm-kernel@lists.infradead.org List-Id: linux-arm-kernel.lists.infradead.org I've been playing with randconfig builds and found an interesting problem with the combination of: CONFIG_ARM_PATCH_PHYS_VIRT=y CONFIG_HOTPLUG=n CONFIG_DMABOUNCE=n CONFIG_MMC_SPI=y The problem is shown with this code: static int __devexit mmc_spi_remove(struct spi_device *spi) { ... dma_unmap_single(host->dma_dev, host->ones_dma, MMC_SPI_BLOCKSIZE, DMA_TO_DEVICE); dma_unmap_single(host->dma_dev, host->data_dma, sizeof(*host->data), DMA_BIDIRECTIONAL); ... } and the error message (in case someone looks for this using google) is `.devexit.text' referenced in section `.pv_table' of drivers/built-in.o: defined in discarded section `.devexit.text' of drivers/built-in.o `.devexit.text' referenced in section `.pv_table' of drivers/built-in.o: defined in discarded section `.devexit.text' of drivers/built-in.o What happens is that dma_unmap_single() calls __dma_single_dev_to_cpu(dma_to_virt(dev, handle), size, dir), which requires patching in the caller. However, due to CONFIG_HOTPLUG being disabled, the __devexit section gets discarded, and the linker cannot create an entry in the .pvtable section for the mmc_spi_remove function. I don't know if the same problem exists in other places in the code, but it's entirely possible. I also couldn't think of a good solution for this, short of moving the definition of dma_unmap_single() to out of line code. Arnd