[OpenBIOS] Q: How to "squeeze" C functions in between two symbols?

[Andreas Färber]

Am 08.10.2010 um 14:54 schrieb Alexander Graf:

> On 08.10.2010, at 14:44, Andreas Färber wrote:
>
>> I've gotten AIX 6/7 to instantiate RTAS (patches upcoming) and  
>> would like to trace what it's trying to do. I probably need to  
>> implement the display-character token.
>
> As you're running in qemu, the gdbstub is very helpful at times.

Not too familiar with gdb, can I use Apple's host gdb for that? I  
believe Blue once said something about gdb not working in *-elf  
configuration and requiring *-linux instead?

>> The RTAS code in arch/ppc/qemu/start.S currently looks like this:
>>
>> GLOBL(of_rtas_start):
>> 	blr
>> GLOBL(of_rtas_end):
>>
>> ...and I would like to branch to C code from there.
>>
>> Is there a way to have code from, say, rtas.c go between the blr  
>> and of_rtas_end symbol?
>> Or do I need to move the symbols to the ldscript and place the code  
>> in a special section? If yes, how?
>
> Why do you want to have the code in between? You can just branch to  
> the C code:
>
>  b c_rtas_function
>
> The only thing you need to make sure is that you follow the ABI :).  
> Input parameters go in r3-rsomething, output is in r3, stack pointer  
> (r1) has to be valid.
>
> Also by only doing the b instead of blr you jump to the C function  
> directly, so a return from there actually returns from the rtas  
> function.

> If the rtas function follows a different ABI, better set up a stack  
> frame and blr into the C function.

I assumed the latter is what I should do, following the CIF example.

>> Those symbols are being used for code size calculation and  
>> relocation in arch/ppc/qemu/methods.c.
>
> Maybe I don't really understand the question though.

Thanks for promptly trying!

The code in methods.c basically does a memcpy() of  
of_rtas_start..of_rtas_end to memory that AIX allocates for us. The  
code is never called at its original location so needs to be PIC.  
Thus, if the C functions are not copied along, any relative addressing  
wouldn't work and absolute addressing would break as soon as the  
functions get unmapped. You might think of it as a "separate"  
executable that OpenBIOS loads and sets up.
Therefore I need a way to get one piece of memory containing the entry  
point, data storage and all helper functions called.

Andreas