Re: [PATCH 3/12] i386: Force section size to be non-zero to prevent a symbol becoming absolute

Eric W. Biederman
2006-10-04T14:09:36Z

Andi Kleen <ak@suse.de> writes:

>> /* writeable */
>> @@ -64,6 +66,7 @@ SECTIONS
>> *(.data.nosave)
>> . = ALIGN(4096);
>> __nosave_end = .;
>> + LONG(0)
>> }
>>
>> . = ALIGN(4096);
>
> You're wasting one full page once for each of these LONG(0)s because
> of the following 4096 alignment.
>
> Isn't there some way to do this less wastefull?

So the problem is that we have sections that don't get relocated which
confuses things. If the first that happened was that the size was
check to see if it was non-zero before we did anything I think we
wouldn't care if the linker messed up in this way.

But I may be wrong on that point.

Eric