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This series introduces new objtool features and a klp-build script to
generate livepatch modules using a source .patch as input.
This builds on concepts from the longstanding out-of-tree kpatch [1]
project which began in 2012 and has been used for many years to generate
livepatch modules for production kernels. However, this is a complete
rewrite which incorporates hard-earned lessons from 12+ years of
maintaining kpatch.
Key improvements compared to kpatch-build:
- Integrated with objtool: Leverages objtool's existing control-flow
graph analysis to help detect changed functions.
- Works on vmlinux.o: Supports late-linked objects, making it
compatible with LTO, IBT, and similar.
- Simplified code base: ~3k fewer lines of code.
- Upstream: No more out-of-tree #ifdef hacks, far less cruft.
- Cleaner internals: Vastly simplified logic for symbol/section/reloc
inclusion and special section extraction.
- Robust __LINE__ macro handling: Avoids false positive binary diffs
caused by the __LINE__ macro by introducing a fix-patch-lines script
which injects #line directives into the source .patch to preserve
the original line numbers at compile time.
The primary user interface is the klp-build script which does the
following:
- Builds an original kernel with -function-sections and
-fdata-sections, plus objtool function checksumming.
- Applies the .patch file and rebuilds the kernel using the same
options.
- Runs 'objtool klp diff' to detect changed functions and generate
intermediate binary diff objects.
- Builds a kernel module which links the diff objects with some
livepatch module init code (scripts/livepatch/init.c).
- Finalizes the livepatch module (aka work around linker wreckage)
using 'objtool klp post-link'.
I've tested with a variety of patches on defconfig and Fedora-config
kernels with both GCC and Clang.
Linux kernel
============
There are several guides for kernel developers and users. These guides can
be rendered in a number of formats, like HTML and PDF. Please read
Documentation/admin-guide/README.rst first.
In order to build the documentation, use ``make htmldocs`` or
``make pdfdocs``. The formatted documentation can also be read online at:
https://www.kernel.org/doc/html/latest/
There are various text files in the Documentation/ subdirectory,
several of them using the reStructuredText markup notation.
Please read the Documentation/process/changes.rst file, as it contains the
requirements for building and running the kernel, and information about
the problems which may result by upgrading your kernel.