Building the Linux kernel with Clang and LLVM
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From: Ingo Molnar <mingo@kernel.org>
To: Nathan Chancellor <nathan@kernel.org>
Cc: Thomas Gleixner <tglx@kernel.org>, Ingo Molnar <mingo@redhat.com>,
	Borislav Petkov <bp@alien8.de>,
	Dave Hansen <dave.hansen@linux.intel.com>,
	x86@kernel.org, Ard Biesheuvel <ardb@kernel.org>,
	Nick Desaulniers <nick.desaulniers+lkml@gmail.com>,
	Bill Wendling <morbo@google.com>,
	Justin Stitt <justinstitt@google.com>,
	linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org, llvm@lists.linux.dev,
	stable@vger.kernel.org
Subject: Re: [PATCH] x86/boot/compressed: Disable jump tables for clang
Date: Wed, 24 Jun 2026 11:36:46 +0200	[thread overview]
Message-ID: <ajulLtY29HtgWokg@gmail.com> (raw)
In-Reply-To: <20260623-x86-boot-compressed-disable-jt-clang-v1-1-575fccd58107@kernel.org>


* Nathan Chancellor <nathan@kernel.org> wrote:

> After a recent upstream LLVM change to start generating jump and lookup
> tables in switch statements in more instances [1], linking the
> compressed x86 boot image when CONFIG_KERNEL_ZSTD is enabled fails with:
> 
>   ld.lld: error: Unexpected run-time relocations (.rela) detected!
> 
> Dumping the relocations in misc.o, which is the only file influenced by
> CONFIG_KERNEL_ZSTD in the decompressor, shows dynamic relocations to
> some string constants, which correspond to the string literals in the
> switch statement in handle_zstd_error():
> 
>   Relocation section '.rela.data.rel.ro' at offset 0x277b0 contains 31 entries:
>       Offset             Info             Type               Symbol's Value  Symbol's Name + Addend
>   0000000000000000  0000006600000001 R_X86_64_64            0000000000000000 .rodata.str1.1 + 73a
>   0000000000000008  0000006600000001 R_X86_64_64            0000000000000000 .rodata.str1.1 + 78e
>   0000000000000010  0000006600000001 R_X86_64_64            0000000000000000 .rodata.str1.1 + 78e
>   0000000000000018  0000006600000001 R_X86_64_64            0000000000000000 .rodata.str1.1 + 78e
>   ...
> 
> This optimization is problematic for the decompressor environment, as it
> is built as -fPIE without any explicit absolute references (as described
> at the top of misc.c) while not applying any dynamic relocations, hence
> the linker assertion. To opt out of this optimization, which is of
> little value in this special early boot code, disable jump tables in the
> decompressor when building with clang. This mirrors the other x86
> startup code in arch/x86/boot/startup.
> 
> Cc: stable@vger.kernel.org
> Closes: https://github.com/ClangBuiltLinux/linux/issues/2165
> Link: https://github.com/llvm/llvm-project/commit/fa02a6ed66b1700c996b49c96c6bc0eb014c9518 [1]
> Signed-off-by: Nathan Chancellor <nathan@kernel.org>
> ---
>  arch/x86/boot/compressed/Makefile | 1 +
>  1 file changed, 1 insertion(+)
> 
> diff --git a/arch/x86/boot/compressed/Makefile b/arch/x86/boot/compressed/Makefile
> index 07e0e64b9a98..1c0d29e3eeba 100644
> --- a/arch/x86/boot/compressed/Makefile
> +++ b/arch/x86/boot/compressed/Makefile
> @@ -31,6 +31,7 @@ KBUILD_CFLAGS += -Wundef
>  KBUILD_CFLAGS += -DDISABLE_BRANCH_PROFILING
>  cflags-$(CONFIG_X86_32) := -march=i386
>  cflags-$(CONFIG_X86_64) := -mcmodel=small -mno-red-zone
> +cflags-$(CONFIG_CC_IS_CLANG) += -fno-jump-tables

So, shouldn't we just use -fno-jump-tables for *all* compilers,
like we do in arch/x86/boot/startup/Makefile?

The point wouldn't be to just work around any Clang
jump-table optimization complications alone, but also
to synchronize the build options of very early code and such.

Thanks,

	Ingo

  reply	other threads:[~2026-06-24  9:36 UTC|newest]

Thread overview: 5+ messages / expand[flat|nested]  mbox.gz  Atom feed  top
2026-06-23 21:47 [PATCH] x86/boot/compressed: Disable jump tables for clang Nathan Chancellor
2026-06-24  9:36 ` Ingo Molnar [this message]
2026-06-24  9:38   ` Peter Zijlstra
2026-06-24  9:51     ` Ingo Molnar
2026-06-24  9:55       ` Ingo Molnar

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