binutils 2.19 issue with kernel link

[Kumar Gala]

On Jul 9, 2009, at 11:39 AM, Dale Farnsworth wrote:

> On Wed, Jul 08, 2009 at 05:41:39PM -0500, Kumar Gala wrote:
>> We are seeing an issue w/ld and kernel linking of 32-bit kernels.
>>
>> The ld from fedora 11 (2.19.51.0.2-17.fc11 20090204) ends not  
>> providing
>> the proper address for _end.
>>
>> Building stock v2.6.30 w/the mpc85xx_defconfig we get:
>>
>> 00001000 A _end
>>
>> Using 2.18.50.20080215 we get:
>>
>> c0680000 A _end
>>
>> If we modify the linker script:
>>
>>      _end2 = .;
>>      _end3 = ALIGN(4096);
>>      _end4 = ALIGN(PAGE_SIZE);
>>      . = ALIGN(PAGE_SIZE);
>>      _end = . ;
>>      PROVIDE32 (end = .);
>>
>> and the result is:
>>
>> 00001000 A _end
>> c067f678 A _end2
>> c0680000 A _end3
>> c0680000 A _end4
>>
>> I used an old version of linker (2.18.50.20080215) and re-linked:
>>
>> c067f678 A _end2
>> c0680000 A _end
>> c0680000 A _end3
>> c0680000 A _end4
>>
>> Any ideas?
>
> We have found the following workaround to be useful.
> Thanks to Andrew Jenner at Code Sourcery.
>
> -Dale
>
> Dale Farnsworth
> MontaVista Software
>
> diff --git a/arch/powerpc/kernel/vmlinux.lds.S b/arch/powerpc/kernel/ 
> vmlinux.lds.S
> index acf237f..34b0181 100644
> --- a/arch/powerpc/kernel/vmlinux.lds.S
> +++ b/arch/powerpc/kernel/vmlinux.lds.S
> @@ -282,4 +282,7 @@ SECTIONS
> 	. = ALIGN(PAGE_SIZE);
> 	_end = . ;
> 	PROVIDE32 (end = .);
> +
> +#undef PPC
> +	.PPC.EMB.apuinfo 0 : { *(.PPC.EMB.apuinfo) }
> }

Is there any plans to fix binutils or is this viewed as not a binutils  
regression?

- k