Subject: Re: 2.3.99-3 axp combo patch
From: Andrea Arcangeli (andrea@suse.de)
Date: Fri Mar 31 2000 - 06:00:14 PST
On Thu, 30 Mar 2000, Richard Henderson wrote:
>Ug. This would prevent the bootloader from writing interesting data
>into bss addresses (after having cleared the thing of course).
The bss section have to be _zeroed_ (IA32 is doing this correctly for
ages, and yes after the bootloader exited). If something that has not to
be zero is allocated in the bss section that's a plain _bug_ in the
bootloader<->kernel interface.
The bootloader must not load _anything_ in the bss section. Magic
variables that deals with the bootloader _have_ to remains separate (at
hardwired offsets) for robusteness. And infact they are always been this
way and the bss-clear-in-common-code patch works fine.
Andrea
This archive was generated by hypermail 2a22 : Sat Apr 01 2000 - 04:15:04 PST