Re: [PATCH v7 22/27] binfmt_elf: Extract .note.gnu.property from an ELF file

From: Thomas Gleixner
Date: Mon Jun 17 2019 - 08:25:47 EST


On Mon, 17 Jun 2019, Florian Weimer wrote:
> * Dave Martin:
> > On Tue, Jun 11, 2019 at 12:31:34PM -0700, Yu-cheng Yu wrote:
> >> We can probably check PT_GNU_PROPERTY first, and fallback (based on ld-linux
> >> version?) to PT_NOTE scanning?
> >
> > For arm64, we can check for PT_GNU_PROPERTY and then give up
> > unconditionally.
> >
> > For x86, we would fall back to PT_NOTE scanning, but this will add a bit
> > of cost to binaries that don't have NT_GNU_PROPERTY_TYPE_0. The ld.so
> > version doesn't tell you what ELF ABI a given executable conforms to.
> >
> > Since this sounds like it's largely a distro-specific issue, maybe there
> > could be a Kconfig option to turn the fallback PT_NOTE scanning on?
>
> I'm worried that this causes interop issues similarly to what we see
> with VSYSCALL today. If we need both and a way to disable it, it should
> be something like a personality flag which can be configured for each
> process tree separately. Ideally, we'd settle on one correct approach
> (i.e., either always process both, or only process PT_GNU_PROPERTY) and
> enforce that.

Chose one and only the one which makes technically sense and is not some
horrible vehicle.

Everytime we did those 'oh we need to make x fly workarounds' we regretted
it sooner than later.

Thanks,

tglx