aarch64 binaries using nolibc segfault before reaching the entry point

From: Sebastian Ott
Date: Wed Sep 13 2023 - 14:45:58 EST


Hi,

the tpidr2 selftest on an arm box segfaults before reaching the entry point.
I have no clue what is to blame for this or how to debug it but for a
statically linked binary there shouldn't be much stuff going on besides the
elf loader?

I can reproduce this with a program using an empty main function. Also checked
for other nolibc users - same result for init.c from rcutorture.

tools/testing/selftests/arm64/fp/za-fork is working though - the only
difference I could spot here is that it is linked together with another object
file. I also looked at the elf headers but didn't find anything obvious (but
I'm a bit out of my comfort zone here..)

After playing around with linker options I found that using -static-pie
lets the binaries run successful.

[root@arm abi]# cat test.c
int main(void)
{
return 1;
}
[root@arm abi]# gcc -Os -static -Wall -lgcc -nostdlib -ffreestanding -include ../../../../include/nolibc/nolibc.h test.c
[root@arm abi]# ./a.out Segmentation fault
[root@arm abi]# gcc -Os -static -Wall -lgcc -nostdlib -ffreestanding -static-pie -include ../../../../include/nolibc/nolibc.h test.c
[root@arm abi]# ./a.out [root@arm abi]#

All on aarch64 running fedora37 + upstream kernel. Any hints on what could
be borken here or how to actually fix it?

Sebastian