David Daney wrote:
I am doing some testing of the gcj java compiler that is part of
gcc-4.2, and have come across a problem.
This is the ld version I am using:
$ mipsel-linux-ld --version
GNU ld version 2.16.91 20050817
libgcj.so.7 contains more than 2^15 symbols in its symbol table. If a
linker stub requires an index for a symbol that has an index greater
than 2^15, then the index gets sign extended into a negative number.
The result is a SIGSEGV at runtime when ld.so tries to look up the
symbol with a negative index.
Thank you for debugging this long-standing problem.
Here is a dissassembly that shows the problem:
# objdump -d -z -j .MIPS.stubs /lib/libgcj.so.7
/lib/libgcj.so.7: file format elf32-tradlittlemips
Disassembly of section .MIPS.stubs:
01597f40 <.MIPS.stubs>:
1597f40: 8f998010 lw t9,-32752(gp)
1597f44: 03e07821 move t7,ra
1597f48: 0320f809 jalr t9
1597f4c: 241897cd li t8,-26675
1597f50: 8f998010 lw t9,-32752(gp)
1597f54: 03e07821 move t7,ra
1597f58: 0320f809 jalr t9
1597f5c: 241897b2 li t8,-26702
Note that the symbol index loaded into t8 is negative.
I think we could easily change the stubs so that they used ori (an
unsigned immediate load), instead of li. This would work for symbol
tables of size up to 2^16.
FWIW: I tested this theory by hand editing the stubs to use the unsigned
immediate load and the library now runs correctly.
That's STUB_LI16 in bfd/elfxx-mips.c:635, used at line 8020. The FIXME
immediately above the latter line is also interesting.
A second option might be to use a two instruction sequence to load t8,
but that would change the size of the stubs. I don't know if that would
be portable or possible.
Comments please.
I would favour a two instruction sequence, applications will continue to
grow. There might be some compatibility traps, but at a superficial
glance I haven't found an obvious blocker.