Re: [PATCH 2/2] MIPS: vmlinux.lds.S: handle .{init,exit}.bss sections

[Franck Bui-Huu <vagabon.xyz@gmail.com>]

Luck, Tony wrote:
> +     /*
> +      * We keep init/exit bss sections here to have only one
> +      * segment to load. Note that .bss.exit is also discarded
> +      * at runtime for the same reason as above.
> +      */
> +     .exit.bss : {
> +             *(.bss.exit)
> +     }
> 
> This change would also require an audit of the bootloader or early
> kernel initialization code (whichever handles zeroing of .bss space)

I think the kernel doesn't rely on the bootloader for clearing bss.

> to make sure that it understands that the kernel will now have an
> extra block of memory that needs to be cleared.  Perhaps nothing
> needs to be done if the code already handled the general case of
> loading an ELF binary with some sections that have an in-memory
> size bigger than the on-disk size.  But worth looking at in case
> the code makes an assumption about what needs to be zeroed.
> 

For MIPS case, there is normally no extra block of memory to
clear. [__bss_start, __bss_stop] range still includes the whole memory
block to clear. So there's no need to modify any other code.

                Franck