Re: Patch boot/common/relocate.S to start kernel at 0x000c

On Wed, Mar 05, 2003 at 02:24:32AM +0000, Paul Mackerras wrote:

Well, there is no reason why the secondary hold code shouldn't just
reference an ordinary variable in the kernel data section.  It would
take a couple more instructions, but that shouldn't be a problem.  The
starting address for the secondary hold code needs to be well-known
(at least to the prep boot wrapper) but the variable that it spins on
doesn't.

Paul.

I took a stab at implementing this.  It's simple when the kernel text
and data are relocated as a unit and PIC references work.  Unfortunately,
that doesn't always happen.  On OF machines, prom_hold_cpus() in
prom_init.c only copies the first 0x100 bytes of kernel text to
location 0 and starts the secondary cpus running at secondary_hold()
within that area.  I thought of passing in a pointer to kernel data,
but that's not sufficient because it looks like in some cases kernel
data is relocated while secondary_hold() is running.

So, if kernel data may be relocated while secondary_hold is polling,
the polled location can't be in kernel data.  Location 0x0 and 0x4 are
beginning to look good to me.

Does this seem right, or am I misreading the code?

-Dale

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