Re: 2.6.26-rc1 on x86: ld: warning: dot moved backwards before `.text'

Sam Ravnborg
2008-05-10T21:15:36Z

On Sat, May 10, 2008 at 01:25:53PM -0700, H. Peter Anvin wrote:
> Mikael Pettersson wrote:
> >
> >The resulting kernel hasn't broken on me yet, however.
> >
> >A search through the LKML archives showed that this was reported
> >for 2.6.25-rc3-mm1, but I couldn't find any discussion about it
> >after that:
> >
> ><http://marc.info/?l=linux-kernel&m=120470303728010&w=2>
> >
> >The .config causing this warning is available in
> ><http://user.it.uu.se/~mikpe/linux/ale/config-2.6.26-rc1>
> >
>
> This is because the organization of the file was changed, and the linker
> script wasn't changed to match:
>
> SECTIONS
> {
> . = HEADER_OFFSET;
> .header : {
> *(.header)
> }
>
> . = 0;
> .text : {
> *(.text*)
> }
>
> This is crap; the sections should be listed *in order* so the linker can
> warn properly when something bad happens.
>
> The code should be correct; reorganizing the linker script correctly
> should fix the problem.

I need Pavel to comment on this.
Why we start with . equal 0x3f00 and then later as . equals 0x0000
I dunno.
I did not look into this part of the code back then - but I should anyway
have seen this flaw in the linker script :-(

Sam