Re: [PATCH] Fix for relocatable PowerPC kernels

[Anton Blanchard <anton@samba.org>]

Hi,

> Is building as ET_DYN supported upstream? We previously had reports of
> building system of some distros to be plainly borked and usualy the
> distro fixed their building system pretty fast. If upstream supports
> ET_DYN, then this patch is accepted with no further questions. But if
> it's a borked building system it may have subtle bugs and allowing it
> would probably just suppress an early symptom of other problems.

This is supported upstream on a number of architectures, for example
the PowerPC configuration option is:

config RELOCATABLE
        bool "Build a relocatable kernel"
        help
          This builds a kernel image that is capable of running anywhere
          in the RMA (real memory area) at any 16k-aligned base address.
          The kernel is linked as a position-independent executable (PIE)
          and contains dynamic relocations which are processed early
          in the bootup process.

          One use is for the kexec on panic case where the recovery kernel
          must live at a different physical address than the primary
          kernel.

Regards,
Anton

> > 2010-07-13  Anton Blanchard  <anton@samba.org>
> >
> > 	* loader/powerpc/ieee1275/linux.c (grub_cmd_linux): Do not reject
> > 	ET_DYN files.
> >
> > Index: grub/loader/powerpc/ieee1275/linux.c
> > ===================================================================
> > --- grub.orig/loader/powerpc/ieee1275/linux.c	2010-07-11 12:05:16.443242734 +1000
> > +++ grub/loader/powerpc/ieee1275/linux.c	2010-07-12 14:56:20.301991065 +1000
> > @@ -220,7 +220,7 @@ grub_cmd_linux (grub_command_t cmd __att
> >    if (! elf)
> >      goto out;
> >  
> > -  if (elf->ehdr.ehdr32.e_type != ET_EXEC)
> > +  if (elf->ehdr.ehdr32.e_type != ET_EXEC && elf->ehdr.ehdr32.e_type != ET_DYN)
> >      {
> >        grub_error (GRUB_ERR_UNKNOWN_OS,
> >  		  "this ELF file is not of the right type");