Re: [PATCH v3 00/17] x86: head_64.S spring cleaning

[Ard Biesheuvel]

On Wed, 23 Nov 2022 at 12:09, Borislav Petkov <bp@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
>
> On Wed, Nov 23, 2022 at 11:52:32AM +0100, Ard Biesheuvel wrote:
> > The patch moves it from .data to .bss inadvertently, and I am not
> > convinced Tom's analysis is entirely accurate: we may simply have
> > garbage in image_offset if we access it before .bss gets cleared.
>
> That should not be too hard to find out: add an endless loop in asm in
> the guest right after the first image_offset access:
>
> 1:
>         jmp 1b
>
> and then dump its value.
>
> Or Tom might have an even better solution.
>
> But looking at the code, BSS clearing happens later, at .Lrelocated and
> the EFI stub comes before it. AFAICT.
>

Indeed. And moving it back into .data makes the most sense in any case
- the point of the patch is to drop the duplicate definitions from asm
code, not to move it into a different section.

The reason I hadn't spotted this is because my boot chain always sets
the value of image_offset during the boot, and does not rely on the
statically initialized value at all.