objtool/klp: Introduce klp diff subcommand for diffing object files
Add a new klp diff subcommand which performs a binary diff between two
object files and extracts changed functions into a new object which can
then be linked into a livepatch module.
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
(coming in a later patch) which injects #line directives into the
source .patch to preserve the original line numbers at compile time.
Note the end result of this subcommand is not yet functionally complete.
Livepatch needs some ELF magic which linkers don't like:
- Two relocation sections (.rela*, .klp.rela*) for the same text
section.
- Use of SHN_LIVEPATCH to mark livepatch symbols.
Unfortunately linkers tend to mangle such things. To work around that,
klp diff generates a linker-compliant intermediate binary which encodes
the relevant KLP section/reloc/symbol metadata.
After module linking, a klp post-link step (coming soon) will clean up
the mess and convert the linked .ko into a fully compliant livepatch
module.
Note this subcommand requires the diffed binaries to have been compiled
with -ffunction-sections and -fdata-sections, and processed with
'objtool --checksum'. Those constraints will be handled by a klp-build
script introduced in a later patch.
Without '-ffunction-sections -fdata-sections', reliable object diffing
would be infeasible due to toolchain limitations:
- For intra-file+intra-section references, the compiler might
occasionally generated hard-coded instruction offsets instead of
relocations.
- Section-symbol-based references can be ambiguous:
- Overlapping or zero-length symbols create ambiguity as to which
symbol is being referenced.
- A reference to the end of a symbol (e.g., checking array bounds)
can be misinterpreted as a reference to the next symbol, or vice
versa.
A potential future alternative to '-ffunction-sections -fdata-sections'
would be to introduce a toolchain option that forces symbol-based
(non-section) relocations.
Acked-by: Petr Mladek <pmladek@suse.com>
Tested-by: Joe Lawrence <joe.lawrence@redhat.com>
Signed-off-by: Josh Poimboeuf <jpoimboe@kernel.org>
2025-09-17 09:03:59 -07:00
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objtool/klp: Ignore replacement offset of empty x86 alternatives
An x86 alternative with an empty replacement, e.g. the second entry of
ALTERNATIVE_2("orig", "repl", ft1, "", ft2)
has a replacementlen of zero. Its replacement offset still gets a
relocation, but the label it points at is the end of the previous
replacement, which is also the beginning of the *next* alternative's
replacement. The value is meaningless; get_alt_entry() already ignores
it for that reason.
klp diff doesn't ignore it. When such an alternative belongs to a
changed function, cloning its relocations drags in the unrelated
neighboring replacement, along with everything that replacement
references. On an x86 clang/lto build an empty alternative in
meminfo_proc_show() pulled in the replacement of an alternative in
proc_kcore_init(), silently emitting a klp relocation against init text
which has long since been freed by the time the patch is applied.
Add arch_alt_ignore_new_reloc() and skip such relocations when cloning.
This has to be arch specific: on arm64 a zero-length replacement instead
identifies an alternative callback, whose replacement offset points at
the callback function and must be preserved.
Fixes: dd590d4d57eb ("objtool/klp: Introduce klp diff subcommand for diffing object files")
Acked-by: Song Liu <song@kernel.org>
Acked-by: Joe Lawrence <joe.lawrence@redhat.com>
Link: https://patch.msgid.link/7a885b70974795c3417f3358869e62aafd4ef783.1786138493.git.jpoimboe@kernel.org
Signed-off-by: Josh Poimboeuf <jpoimboe@kernel.org>
2026-08-07 14:37:48 -07:00
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objtool/klp: Introduce klp diff subcommand for diffing object files
Add a new klp diff subcommand which performs a binary diff between two
object files and extracts changed functions into a new object which can
then be linked into a livepatch module.
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
(coming in a later patch) which injects #line directives into the
source .patch to preserve the original line numbers at compile time.
Note the end result of this subcommand is not yet functionally complete.
Livepatch needs some ELF magic which linkers don't like:
- Two relocation sections (.rela*, .klp.rela*) for the same text
section.
- Use of SHN_LIVEPATCH to mark livepatch symbols.
Unfortunately linkers tend to mangle such things. To work around that,
klp diff generates a linker-compliant intermediate binary which encodes
the relevant KLP section/reloc/symbol metadata.
After module linking, a klp post-link step (coming soon) will clean up
the mess and convert the linked .ko into a fully compliant livepatch
module.
Note this subcommand requires the diffed binaries to have been compiled
with -ffunction-sections and -fdata-sections, and processed with
'objtool --checksum'. Those constraints will be handled by a klp-build
script introduced in a later patch.
Without '-ffunction-sections -fdata-sections', reliable object diffing
would be infeasible due to toolchain limitations:
- For intra-file+intra-section references, the compiler might
occasionally generated hard-coded instruction offsets instead of
relocations.
- Section-symbol-based references can be ambiguous:
- Overlapping or zero-length symbols create ambiguity as to which
symbol is being referenced.
- A reference to the end of a symbol (e.g., checking array bounds)
can be misinterpreted as a reference to the next symbol, or vice
versa.
A potential future alternative to '-ffunction-sections -fdata-sections'
would be to introduce a toolchain option that forces symbol-based
(non-section) relocations.
Acked-by: Petr Mladek <pmladek@suse.com>
Tested-by: Joe Lawrence <joe.lawrence@redhat.com>
Signed-off-by: Josh Poimboeuf <jpoimboe@kernel.org>
2025-09-17 09:03:59 -07:00
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2026-03-10 16:37:40 -04:00
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objtool/klp: Introduce klp diff subcommand for diffing object files
Add a new klp diff subcommand which performs a binary diff between two
object files and extracts changed functions into a new object which can
then be linked into a livepatch module.
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
(coming in a later patch) which injects #line directives into the
source .patch to preserve the original line numbers at compile time.
Note the end result of this subcommand is not yet functionally complete.
Livepatch needs some ELF magic which linkers don't like:
- Two relocation sections (.rela*, .klp.rela*) for the same text
section.
- Use of SHN_LIVEPATCH to mark livepatch symbols.
Unfortunately linkers tend to mangle such things. To work around that,
klp diff generates a linker-compliant intermediate binary which encodes
the relevant KLP section/reloc/symbol metadata.
After module linking, a klp post-link step (coming soon) will clean up
the mess and convert the linked .ko into a fully compliant livepatch
module.
Note this subcommand requires the diffed binaries to have been compiled
with -ffunction-sections and -fdata-sections, and processed with
'objtool --checksum'. Those constraints will be handled by a klp-build
script introduced in a later patch.
Without '-ffunction-sections -fdata-sections', reliable object diffing
would be infeasible due to toolchain limitations:
- For intra-file+intra-section references, the compiler might
occasionally generated hard-coded instruction offsets instead of
relocations.
- Section-symbol-based references can be ambiguous:
- Overlapping or zero-length symbols create ambiguity as to which
symbol is being referenced.
- A reference to the end of a symbol (e.g., checking array bounds)
can be misinterpreted as a reference to the next symbol, or vice
versa.
A potential future alternative to '-ffunction-sections -fdata-sections'
would be to introduce a toolchain option that forces symbol-based
(non-section) relocations.
Acked-by: Petr Mladek <pmladek@suse.com>
Tested-by: Joe Lawrence <joe.lawrence@redhat.com>
Signed-off-by: Josh Poimboeuf <jpoimboe@kernel.org>
2025-09-17 09:03:59 -07:00
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2026-08-07 14:37:53 -07:00
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objtool/klp: Introduce klp diff subcommand for diffing object files
Add a new klp diff subcommand which performs a binary diff between two
object files and extracts changed functions into a new object which can
then be linked into a livepatch module.
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
(coming in a later patch) which injects #line directives into the
source .patch to preserve the original line numbers at compile time.
Note the end result of this subcommand is not yet functionally complete.
Livepatch needs some ELF magic which linkers don't like:
- Two relocation sections (.rela*, .klp.rela*) for the same text
section.
- Use of SHN_LIVEPATCH to mark livepatch symbols.
Unfortunately linkers tend to mangle such things. To work around that,
klp diff generates a linker-compliant intermediate binary which encodes
the relevant KLP section/reloc/symbol metadata.
After module linking, a klp post-link step (coming soon) will clean up
the mess and convert the linked .ko into a fully compliant livepatch
module.
Note this subcommand requires the diffed binaries to have been compiled
with -ffunction-sections and -fdata-sections, and processed with
'objtool --checksum'. Those constraints will be handled by a klp-build
script introduced in a later patch.
Without '-ffunction-sections -fdata-sections', reliable object diffing
would be infeasible due to toolchain limitations:
- For intra-file+intra-section references, the compiler might
occasionally generated hard-coded instruction offsets instead of
relocations.
- Section-symbol-based references can be ambiguous:
- Overlapping or zero-length symbols create ambiguity as to which
symbol is being referenced.
- A reference to the end of a symbol (e.g., checking array bounds)
can be misinterpreted as a reference to the next symbol, or vice
versa.
A potential future alternative to '-ffunction-sections -fdata-sections'
would be to introduce a toolchain option that forces symbol-based
(non-section) relocations.
Acked-by: Petr Mladek <pmladek@suse.com>
Tested-by: Joe Lawrence <joe.lawrence@redhat.com>
Signed-off-by: Josh Poimboeuf <jpoimboe@kernel.org>
2025-09-17 09:03:59 -07:00
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2026-04-20 22:58:37 -07:00
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objtool/klp: Introduce klp diff subcommand for diffing object files
Add a new klp diff subcommand which performs a binary diff between two
object files and extracts changed functions into a new object which can
then be linked into a livepatch module.
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
(coming in a later patch) which injects #line directives into the
source .patch to preserve the original line numbers at compile time.
Note the end result of this subcommand is not yet functionally complete.
Livepatch needs some ELF magic which linkers don't like:
- Two relocation sections (.rela*, .klp.rela*) for the same text
section.
- Use of SHN_LIVEPATCH to mark livepatch symbols.
Unfortunately linkers tend to mangle such things. To work around that,
klp diff generates a linker-compliant intermediate binary which encodes
the relevant KLP section/reloc/symbol metadata.
After module linking, a klp post-link step (coming soon) will clean up
the mess and convert the linked .ko into a fully compliant livepatch
module.
Note this subcommand requires the diffed binaries to have been compiled
with -ffunction-sections and -fdata-sections, and processed with
'objtool --checksum'. Those constraints will be handled by a klp-build
script introduced in a later patch.
Without '-ffunction-sections -fdata-sections', reliable object diffing
would be infeasible due to toolchain limitations:
- For intra-file+intra-section references, the compiler might
occasionally generated hard-coded instruction offsets instead of
relocations.
- Section-symbol-based references can be ambiguous:
- Overlapping or zero-length symbols create ambiguity as to which
symbol is being referenced.
- A reference to the end of a symbol (e.g., checking array bounds)
can be misinterpreted as a reference to the next symbol, or vice
versa.
A potential future alternative to '-ffunction-sections -fdata-sections'
would be to introduce a toolchain option that forces symbol-based
(non-section) relocations.
Acked-by: Petr Mladek <pmladek@suse.com>
Tested-by: Joe Lawrence <joe.lawrence@redhat.com>
Signed-off-by: Josh Poimboeuf <jpoimboe@kernel.org>
2025-09-17 09:03:59 -07:00
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2025-09-17 09:04:00 -07:00
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2026-04-20 22:58:37 -07:00
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objtool/klp: Introduce klp diff subcommand for diffing object files
Add a new klp diff subcommand which performs a binary diff between two
object files and extracts changed functions into a new object which can
then be linked into a livepatch module.
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
(coming in a later patch) which injects #line directives into the
source .patch to preserve the original line numbers at compile time.
Note the end result of this subcommand is not yet functionally complete.
Livepatch needs some ELF magic which linkers don't like:
- Two relocation sections (.rela*, .klp.rela*) for the same text
section.
- Use of SHN_LIVEPATCH to mark livepatch symbols.
Unfortunately linkers tend to mangle such things. To work around that,
klp diff generates a linker-compliant intermediate binary which encodes
the relevant KLP section/reloc/symbol metadata.
After module linking, a klp post-link step (coming soon) will clean up
the mess and convert the linked .ko into a fully compliant livepatch
module.
Note this subcommand requires the diffed binaries to have been compiled
with -ffunction-sections and -fdata-sections, and processed with
'objtool --checksum'. Those constraints will be handled by a klp-build
script introduced in a later patch.
Without '-ffunction-sections -fdata-sections', reliable object diffing
would be infeasible due to toolchain limitations:
- For intra-file+intra-section references, the compiler might
occasionally generated hard-coded instruction offsets instead of
relocations.
- Section-symbol-based references can be ambiguous:
- Overlapping or zero-length symbols create ambiguity as to which
symbol is being referenced.
- A reference to the end of a symbol (e.g., checking array bounds)
can be misinterpreted as a reference to the next symbol, or vice
versa.
A potential future alternative to '-ffunction-sections -fdata-sections'
would be to introduce a toolchain option that forces symbol-based
(non-section) relocations.
Acked-by: Petr Mladek <pmladek@suse.com>
Tested-by: Joe Lawrence <joe.lawrence@redhat.com>
Signed-off-by: Josh Poimboeuf <jpoimboe@kernel.org>
2025-09-17 09:03:59 -07:00
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2025-09-17 09:04:00 -07:00
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2026-08-02 20:24:24 -07:00
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objtool/klp: Introduce klp diff subcommand for diffing object files
Add a new klp diff subcommand which performs a binary diff between two
object files and extracts changed functions into a new object which can
then be linked into a livepatch module.
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
(coming in a later patch) which injects #line directives into the
source .patch to preserve the original line numbers at compile time.
Note the end result of this subcommand is not yet functionally complete.
Livepatch needs some ELF magic which linkers don't like:
- Two relocation sections (.rela*, .klp.rela*) for the same text
section.
- Use of SHN_LIVEPATCH to mark livepatch symbols.
Unfortunately linkers tend to mangle such things. To work around that,
klp diff generates a linker-compliant intermediate binary which encodes
the relevant KLP section/reloc/symbol metadata.
After module linking, a klp post-link step (coming soon) will clean up
the mess and convert the linked .ko into a fully compliant livepatch
module.
Note this subcommand requires the diffed binaries to have been compiled
with -ffunction-sections and -fdata-sections, and processed with
'objtool --checksum'. Those constraints will be handled by a klp-build
script introduced in a later patch.
Without '-ffunction-sections -fdata-sections', reliable object diffing
would be infeasible due to toolchain limitations:
- For intra-file+intra-section references, the compiler might
occasionally generated hard-coded instruction offsets instead of
relocations.
- Section-symbol-based references can be ambiguous:
- Overlapping or zero-length symbols create ambiguity as to which
symbol is being referenced.
- A reference to the end of a symbol (e.g., checking array bounds)
can be misinterpreted as a reference to the next symbol, or vice
versa.
A potential future alternative to '-ffunction-sections -fdata-sections'
would be to introduce a toolchain option that forces symbol-based
(non-section) relocations.
Acked-by: Petr Mladek <pmladek@suse.com>
Tested-by: Joe Lawrence <joe.lawrence@redhat.com>
Signed-off-by: Josh Poimboeuf <jpoimboe@kernel.org>
2025-09-17 09:03:59 -07:00
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2026-08-07 14:37:54 -07:00
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objtool/klp: Introduce klp diff subcommand for diffing object files
Add a new klp diff subcommand which performs a binary diff between two
object files and extracts changed functions into a new object which can
then be linked into a livepatch module.
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
(coming in a later patch) which injects #line directives into the
source .patch to preserve the original line numbers at compile time.
Note the end result of this subcommand is not yet functionally complete.
Livepatch needs some ELF magic which linkers don't like:
- Two relocation sections (.rela*, .klp.rela*) for the same text
section.
- Use of SHN_LIVEPATCH to mark livepatch symbols.
Unfortunately linkers tend to mangle such things. To work around that,
klp diff generates a linker-compliant intermediate binary which encodes
the relevant KLP section/reloc/symbol metadata.
After module linking, a klp post-link step (coming soon) will clean up
the mess and convert the linked .ko into a fully compliant livepatch
module.
Note this subcommand requires the diffed binaries to have been compiled
with -ffunction-sections and -fdata-sections, and processed with
'objtool --checksum'. Those constraints will be handled by a klp-build
script introduced in a later patch.
Without '-ffunction-sections -fdata-sections', reliable object diffing
would be infeasible due to toolchain limitations:
- For intra-file+intra-section references, the compiler might
occasionally generated hard-coded instruction offsets instead of
relocations.
- Section-symbol-based references can be ambiguous:
- Overlapping or zero-length symbols create ambiguity as to which
symbol is being referenced.
- A reference to the end of a symbol (e.g., checking array bounds)
can be misinterpreted as a reference to the next symbol, or vice
versa.
A potential future alternative to '-ffunction-sections -fdata-sections'
would be to introduce a toolchain option that forces symbol-based
(non-section) relocations.
Acked-by: Petr Mladek <pmladek@suse.com>
Tested-by: Joe Lawrence <joe.lawrence@redhat.com>
Signed-off-by: Josh Poimboeuf <jpoimboe@kernel.org>
2025-09-17 09:03:59 -07:00
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2026-08-07 14:37:53 -07:00
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objtool/klp: Introduce klp diff subcommand for diffing object files
Add a new klp diff subcommand which performs a binary diff between two
object files and extracts changed functions into a new object which can
then be linked into a livepatch module.
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
(coming in a later patch) which injects #line directives into the
source .patch to preserve the original line numbers at compile time.
Note the end result of this subcommand is not yet functionally complete.
Livepatch needs some ELF magic which linkers don't like:
- Two relocation sections (.rela*, .klp.rela*) for the same text
section.
- Use of SHN_LIVEPATCH to mark livepatch symbols.
Unfortunately linkers tend to mangle such things. To work around that,
klp diff generates a linker-compliant intermediate binary which encodes
the relevant KLP section/reloc/symbol metadata.
After module linking, a klp post-link step (coming soon) will clean up
the mess and convert the linked .ko into a fully compliant livepatch
module.
Note this subcommand requires the diffed binaries to have been compiled
with -ffunction-sections and -fdata-sections, and processed with
'objtool --checksum'. Those constraints will be handled by a klp-build
script introduced in a later patch.
Without '-ffunction-sections -fdata-sections', reliable object diffing
would be infeasible due to toolchain limitations:
- For intra-file+intra-section references, the compiler might
occasionally generated hard-coded instruction offsets instead of
relocations.
- Section-symbol-based references can be ambiguous:
- Overlapping or zero-length symbols create ambiguity as to which
symbol is being referenced.
- A reference to the end of a symbol (e.g., checking array bounds)
can be misinterpreted as a reference to the next symbol, or vice
versa.
A potential future alternative to '-ffunction-sections -fdata-sections'
would be to introduce a toolchain option that forces symbol-based
(non-section) relocations.
Acked-by: Petr Mladek <pmladek@suse.com>
Tested-by: Joe Lawrence <joe.lawrence@redhat.com>
Signed-off-by: Josh Poimboeuf <jpoimboe@kernel.org>
2025-09-17 09:03:59 -07:00
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2026-08-07 14:37:54 -07:00
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|
objtool/klp: Introduce klp diff subcommand for diffing object files
Add a new klp diff subcommand which performs a binary diff between two
object files and extracts changed functions into a new object which can
then be linked into a livepatch module.
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
(coming in a later patch) which injects #line directives into the
source .patch to preserve the original line numbers at compile time.
Note the end result of this subcommand is not yet functionally complete.
Livepatch needs some ELF magic which linkers don't like:
- Two relocation sections (.rela*, .klp.rela*) for the same text
section.
- Use of SHN_LIVEPATCH to mark livepatch symbols.
Unfortunately linkers tend to mangle such things. To work around that,
klp diff generates a linker-compliant intermediate binary which encodes
the relevant KLP section/reloc/symbol metadata.
After module linking, a klp post-link step (coming soon) will clean up
the mess and convert the linked .ko into a fully compliant livepatch
module.
Note this subcommand requires the diffed binaries to have been compiled
with -ffunction-sections and -fdata-sections, and processed with
'objtool --checksum'. Those constraints will be handled by a klp-build
script introduced in a later patch.
Without '-ffunction-sections -fdata-sections', reliable object diffing
would be infeasible due to toolchain limitations:
- For intra-file+intra-section references, the compiler might
occasionally generated hard-coded instruction offsets instead of
relocations.
- Section-symbol-based references can be ambiguous:
- Overlapping or zero-length symbols create ambiguity as to which
symbol is being referenced.
- A reference to the end of a symbol (e.g., checking array bounds)
can be misinterpreted as a reference to the next symbol, or vice
versa.
A potential future alternative to '-ffunction-sections -fdata-sections'
would be to introduce a toolchain option that forces symbol-based
(non-section) relocations.
Acked-by: Petr Mladek <pmladek@suse.com>
Tested-by: Joe Lawrence <joe.lawrence@redhat.com>
Signed-off-by: Josh Poimboeuf <jpoimboe@kernel.org>
2025-09-17 09:03:59 -07:00
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2026-08-07 14:37:53 -07:00
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objtool/klp: Introduce klp diff subcommand for diffing object files
Add a new klp diff subcommand which performs a binary diff between two
object files and extracts changed functions into a new object which can
then be linked into a livepatch module.
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
(coming in a later patch) which injects #line directives into the
source .patch to preserve the original line numbers at compile time.
Note the end result of this subcommand is not yet functionally complete.
Livepatch needs some ELF magic which linkers don't like:
- Two relocation sections (.rela*, .klp.rela*) for the same text
section.
- Use of SHN_LIVEPATCH to mark livepatch symbols.
Unfortunately linkers tend to mangle such things. To work around that,
klp diff generates a linker-compliant intermediate binary which encodes
the relevant KLP section/reloc/symbol metadata.
After module linking, a klp post-link step (coming soon) will clean up
the mess and convert the linked .ko into a fully compliant livepatch
module.
Note this subcommand requires the diffed binaries to have been compiled
with -ffunction-sections and -fdata-sections, and processed with
'objtool --checksum'. Those constraints will be handled by a klp-build
script introduced in a later patch.
Without '-ffunction-sections -fdata-sections', reliable object diffing
would be infeasible due to toolchain limitations:
- For intra-file+intra-section references, the compiler might
occasionally generated hard-coded instruction offsets instead of
relocations.
- Section-symbol-based references can be ambiguous:
- Overlapping or zero-length symbols create ambiguity as to which
symbol is being referenced.
- A reference to the end of a symbol (e.g., checking array bounds)
can be misinterpreted as a reference to the next symbol, or vice
versa.
A potential future alternative to '-ffunction-sections -fdata-sections'
would be to introduce a toolchain option that forces symbol-based
(non-section) relocations.
Acked-by: Petr Mladek <pmladek@suse.com>
Tested-by: Joe Lawrence <joe.lawrence@redhat.com>
Signed-off-by: Josh Poimboeuf <jpoimboe@kernel.org>
2025-09-17 09:03:59 -07:00
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2026-08-02 20:24:24 -07:00
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objtool/klp: Introduce klp diff subcommand for diffing object files
Add a new klp diff subcommand which performs a binary diff between two
object files and extracts changed functions into a new object which can
then be linked into a livepatch module.
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
(coming in a later patch) which injects #line directives into the
source .patch to preserve the original line numbers at compile time.
Note the end result of this subcommand is not yet functionally complete.
Livepatch needs some ELF magic which linkers don't like:
- Two relocation sections (.rela*, .klp.rela*) for the same text
section.
- Use of SHN_LIVEPATCH to mark livepatch symbols.
Unfortunately linkers tend to mangle such things. To work around that,
klp diff generates a linker-compliant intermediate binary which encodes
the relevant KLP section/reloc/symbol metadata.
After module linking, a klp post-link step (coming soon) will clean up
the mess and convert the linked .ko into a fully compliant livepatch
module.
Note this subcommand requires the diffed binaries to have been compiled
with -ffunction-sections and -fdata-sections, and processed with
'objtool --checksum'. Those constraints will be handled by a klp-build
script introduced in a later patch.
Without '-ffunction-sections -fdata-sections', reliable object diffing
would be infeasible due to toolchain limitations:
- For intra-file+intra-section references, the compiler might
occasionally generated hard-coded instruction offsets instead of
relocations.
- Section-symbol-based references can be ambiguous:
- Overlapping or zero-length symbols create ambiguity as to which
symbol is being referenced.
- A reference to the end of a symbol (e.g., checking array bounds)
can be misinterpreted as a reference to the next symbol, or vice
versa.
A potential future alternative to '-ffunction-sections -fdata-sections'
would be to introduce a toolchain option that forces symbol-based
(non-section) relocations.
Acked-by: Petr Mladek <pmladek@suse.com>
Tested-by: Joe Lawrence <joe.lawrence@redhat.com>
Signed-off-by: Josh Poimboeuf <jpoimboe@kernel.org>
2025-09-17 09:03:59 -07:00
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2026-08-07 14:37:53 -07:00
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objtool/klp: Introduce klp diff subcommand for diffing object files
Add a new klp diff subcommand which performs a binary diff between two
object files and extracts changed functions into a new object which can
then be linked into a livepatch module.
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
(coming in a later patch) which injects #line directives into the
source .patch to preserve the original line numbers at compile time.
Note the end result of this subcommand is not yet functionally complete.
Livepatch needs some ELF magic which linkers don't like:
- Two relocation sections (.rela*, .klp.rela*) for the same text
section.
- Use of SHN_LIVEPATCH to mark livepatch symbols.
Unfortunately linkers tend to mangle such things. To work around that,
klp diff generates a linker-compliant intermediate binary which encodes
the relevant KLP section/reloc/symbol metadata.
After module linking, a klp post-link step (coming soon) will clean up
the mess and convert the linked .ko into a fully compliant livepatch
module.
Note this subcommand requires the diffed binaries to have been compiled
with -ffunction-sections and -fdata-sections, and processed with
'objtool --checksum'. Those constraints will be handled by a klp-build
script introduced in a later patch.
Without '-ffunction-sections -fdata-sections', reliable object diffing
would be infeasible due to toolchain limitations:
- For intra-file+intra-section references, the compiler might
occasionally generated hard-coded instruction offsets instead of
relocations.
- Section-symbol-based references can be ambiguous:
- Overlapping or zero-length symbols create ambiguity as to which
symbol is being referenced.
- A reference to the end of a symbol (e.g., checking array bounds)
can be misinterpreted as a reference to the next symbol, or vice
versa.
A potential future alternative to '-ffunction-sections -fdata-sections'
would be to introduce a toolchain option that forces symbol-based
(non-section) relocations.
Acked-by: Petr Mladek <pmladek@suse.com>
Tested-by: Joe Lawrence <joe.lawrence@redhat.com>
Signed-off-by: Josh Poimboeuf <jpoimboe@kernel.org>
2025-09-17 09:03:59 -07:00
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2026-04-03 13:08:32 -07:00
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objtool/klp: Introduce klp diff subcommand for diffing object files
Add a new klp diff subcommand which performs a binary diff between two
object files and extracts changed functions into a new object which can
then be linked into a livepatch module.
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
(coming in a later patch) which injects #line directives into the
source .patch to preserve the original line numbers at compile time.
Note the end result of this subcommand is not yet functionally complete.
Livepatch needs some ELF magic which linkers don't like:
- Two relocation sections (.rela*, .klp.rela*) for the same text
section.
- Use of SHN_LIVEPATCH to mark livepatch symbols.
Unfortunately linkers tend to mangle such things. To work around that,
klp diff generates a linker-compliant intermediate binary which encodes
the relevant KLP section/reloc/symbol metadata.
After module linking, a klp post-link step (coming soon) will clean up
the mess and convert the linked .ko into a fully compliant livepatch
module.
Note this subcommand requires the diffed binaries to have been compiled
with -ffunction-sections and -fdata-sections, and processed with
'objtool --checksum'. Those constraints will be handled by a klp-build
script introduced in a later patch.
Without '-ffunction-sections -fdata-sections', reliable object diffing
would be infeasible due to toolchain limitations:
- For intra-file+intra-section references, the compiler might
occasionally generated hard-coded instruction offsets instead of
relocations.
- Section-symbol-based references can be ambiguous:
- Overlapping or zero-length symbols create ambiguity as to which
symbol is being referenced.
- A reference to the end of a symbol (e.g., checking array bounds)
can be misinterpreted as a reference to the next symbol, or vice
versa.
A potential future alternative to '-ffunction-sections -fdata-sections'
would be to introduce a toolchain option that forces symbol-based
(non-section) relocations.
Acked-by: Petr Mladek <pmladek@suse.com>
Tested-by: Joe Lawrence <joe.lawrence@redhat.com>
Signed-off-by: Josh Poimboeuf <jpoimboe@kernel.org>
2025-09-17 09:03:59 -07:00
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2026-04-15 22:49:53 -07:00
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|
objtool/klp: Introduce klp diff subcommand for diffing object files
Add a new klp diff subcommand which performs a binary diff between two
object files and extracts changed functions into a new object which can
then be linked into a livepatch module.
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
(coming in a later patch) which injects #line directives into the
source .patch to preserve the original line numbers at compile time.
Note the end result of this subcommand is not yet functionally complete.
Livepatch needs some ELF magic which linkers don't like:
- Two relocation sections (.rela*, .klp.rela*) for the same text
section.
- Use of SHN_LIVEPATCH to mark livepatch symbols.
Unfortunately linkers tend to mangle such things. To work around that,
klp diff generates a linker-compliant intermediate binary which encodes
the relevant KLP section/reloc/symbol metadata.
After module linking, a klp post-link step (coming soon) will clean up
the mess and convert the linked .ko into a fully compliant livepatch
module.
Note this subcommand requires the diffed binaries to have been compiled
with -ffunction-sections and -fdata-sections, and processed with
'objtool --checksum'. Those constraints will be handled by a klp-build
script introduced in a later patch.
Without '-ffunction-sections -fdata-sections', reliable object diffing
would be infeasible due to toolchain limitations:
- For intra-file+intra-section references, the compiler might
occasionally generated hard-coded instruction offsets instead of
relocations.
- Section-symbol-based references can be ambiguous:
- Overlapping or zero-length symbols create ambiguity as to which
symbol is being referenced.
- A reference to the end of a symbol (e.g., checking array bounds)
can be misinterpreted as a reference to the next symbol, or vice
versa.
A potential future alternative to '-ffunction-sections -fdata-sections'
would be to introduce a toolchain option that forces symbol-based
(non-section) relocations.
Acked-by: Petr Mladek <pmladek@suse.com>
Tested-by: Joe Lawrence <joe.lawrence@redhat.com>
Signed-off-by: Josh Poimboeuf <jpoimboe@kernel.org>
2025-09-17 09:03:59 -07:00
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2026-04-08 10:49:19 -04:00
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objtool/klp: Introduce klp diff subcommand for diffing object files
Add a new klp diff subcommand which performs a binary diff between two
object files and extracts changed functions into a new object which can
then be linked into a livepatch module.
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
(coming in a later patch) which injects #line directives into the
source .patch to preserve the original line numbers at compile time.
Note the end result of this subcommand is not yet functionally complete.
Livepatch needs some ELF magic which linkers don't like:
- Two relocation sections (.rela*, .klp.rela*) for the same text
section.
- Use of SHN_LIVEPATCH to mark livepatch symbols.
Unfortunately linkers tend to mangle such things. To work around that,
klp diff generates a linker-compliant intermediate binary which encodes
the relevant KLP section/reloc/symbol metadata.
After module linking, a klp post-link step (coming soon) will clean up
the mess and convert the linked .ko into a fully compliant livepatch
module.
Note this subcommand requires the diffed binaries to have been compiled
with -ffunction-sections and -fdata-sections, and processed with
'objtool --checksum'. Those constraints will be handled by a klp-build
script introduced in a later patch.
Without '-ffunction-sections -fdata-sections', reliable object diffing
would be infeasible due to toolchain limitations:
- For intra-file+intra-section references, the compiler might
occasionally generated hard-coded instruction offsets instead of
relocations.
- Section-symbol-based references can be ambiguous:
- Overlapping or zero-length symbols create ambiguity as to which
symbol is being referenced.
- A reference to the end of a symbol (e.g., checking array bounds)
can be misinterpreted as a reference to the next symbol, or vice
versa.
A potential future alternative to '-ffunction-sections -fdata-sections'
would be to introduce a toolchain option that forces symbol-based
(non-section) relocations.
Acked-by: Petr Mladek <pmladek@suse.com>
Tested-by: Joe Lawrence <joe.lawrence@redhat.com>
Signed-off-by: Josh Poimboeuf <jpoimboe@kernel.org>
2025-09-17 09:03:59 -07:00
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2026-04-08 10:49:19 -04:00
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objtool/klp: Introduce klp diff subcommand for diffing object files
Add a new klp diff subcommand which performs a binary diff between two
object files and extracts changed functions into a new object which can
then be linked into a livepatch module.
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
(coming in a later patch) which injects #line directives into the
source .patch to preserve the original line numbers at compile time.
Note the end result of this subcommand is not yet functionally complete.
Livepatch needs some ELF magic which linkers don't like:
- Two relocation sections (.rela*, .klp.rela*) for the same text
section.
- Use of SHN_LIVEPATCH to mark livepatch symbols.
Unfortunately linkers tend to mangle such things. To work around that,
klp diff generates a linker-compliant intermediate binary which encodes
the relevant KLP section/reloc/symbol metadata.
After module linking, a klp post-link step (coming soon) will clean up
the mess and convert the linked .ko into a fully compliant livepatch
module.
Note this subcommand requires the diffed binaries to have been compiled
with -ffunction-sections and -fdata-sections, and processed with
'objtool --checksum'. Those constraints will be handled by a klp-build
script introduced in a later patch.
Without '-ffunction-sections -fdata-sections', reliable object diffing
would be infeasible due to toolchain limitations:
- For intra-file+intra-section references, the compiler might
occasionally generated hard-coded instruction offsets instead of
relocations.
- Section-symbol-based references can be ambiguous:
- Overlapping or zero-length symbols create ambiguity as to which
symbol is being referenced.
- A reference to the end of a symbol (e.g., checking array bounds)
can be misinterpreted as a reference to the next symbol, or vice
versa.
A potential future alternative to '-ffunction-sections -fdata-sections'
would be to introduce a toolchain option that forces symbol-based
(non-section) relocations.
Acked-by: Petr Mladek <pmladek@suse.com>
Tested-by: Joe Lawrence <joe.lawrence@redhat.com>
Signed-off-by: Josh Poimboeuf <jpoimboe@kernel.org>
2025-09-17 09:03:59 -07:00
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2026-04-11 21:11:24 -07:00
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objtool/klp: Introduce klp diff subcommand for diffing object files
Add a new klp diff subcommand which performs a binary diff between two
object files and extracts changed functions into a new object which can
then be linked into a livepatch module.
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
(coming in a later patch) which injects #line directives into the
source .patch to preserve the original line numbers at compile time.
Note the end result of this subcommand is not yet functionally complete.
Livepatch needs some ELF magic which linkers don't like:
- Two relocation sections (.rela*, .klp.rela*) for the same text
section.
- Use of SHN_LIVEPATCH to mark livepatch symbols.
Unfortunately linkers tend to mangle such things. To work around that,
klp diff generates a linker-compliant intermediate binary which encodes
the relevant KLP section/reloc/symbol metadata.
After module linking, a klp post-link step (coming soon) will clean up
the mess and convert the linked .ko into a fully compliant livepatch
module.
Note this subcommand requires the diffed binaries to have been compiled
with -ffunction-sections and -fdata-sections, and processed with
'objtool --checksum'. Those constraints will be handled by a klp-build
script introduced in a later patch.
Without '-ffunction-sections -fdata-sections', reliable object diffing
would be infeasible due to toolchain limitations:
- For intra-file+intra-section references, the compiler might
occasionally generated hard-coded instruction offsets instead of
relocations.
- Section-symbol-based references can be ambiguous:
- Overlapping or zero-length symbols create ambiguity as to which
symbol is being referenced.
- A reference to the end of a symbol (e.g., checking array bounds)
can be misinterpreted as a reference to the next symbol, or vice
versa.
A potential future alternative to '-ffunction-sections -fdata-sections'
would be to introduce a toolchain option that forces symbol-based
(non-section) relocations.
Acked-by: Petr Mladek <pmladek@suse.com>
Tested-by: Joe Lawrence <joe.lawrence@redhat.com>
Signed-off-by: Josh Poimboeuf <jpoimboe@kernel.org>
2025-09-17 09:03:59 -07:00
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2026-04-08 10:49:19 -04:00
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objtool/klp: Introduce klp diff subcommand for diffing object files
Add a new klp diff subcommand which performs a binary diff between two
object files and extracts changed functions into a new object which can
then be linked into a livepatch module.
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
(coming in a later patch) which injects #line directives into the
source .patch to preserve the original line numbers at compile time.
Note the end result of this subcommand is not yet functionally complete.
Livepatch needs some ELF magic which linkers don't like:
- Two relocation sections (.rela*, .klp.rela*) for the same text
section.
- Use of SHN_LIVEPATCH to mark livepatch symbols.
Unfortunately linkers tend to mangle such things. To work around that,
klp diff generates a linker-compliant intermediate binary which encodes
the relevant KLP section/reloc/symbol metadata.
After module linking, a klp post-link step (coming soon) will clean up
the mess and convert the linked .ko into a fully compliant livepatch
module.
Note this subcommand requires the diffed binaries to have been compiled
with -ffunction-sections and -fdata-sections, and processed with
'objtool --checksum'. Those constraints will be handled by a klp-build
script introduced in a later patch.
Without '-ffunction-sections -fdata-sections', reliable object diffing
would be infeasible due to toolchain limitations:
- For intra-file+intra-section references, the compiler might
occasionally generated hard-coded instruction offsets instead of
relocations.
- Section-symbol-based references can be ambiguous:
- Overlapping or zero-length symbols create ambiguity as to which
symbol is being referenced.
- A reference to the end of a symbol (e.g., checking array bounds)
can be misinterpreted as a reference to the next symbol, or vice
versa.
A potential future alternative to '-ffunction-sections -fdata-sections'
would be to introduce a toolchain option that forces symbol-based
(non-section) relocations.
Acked-by: Petr Mladek <pmladek@suse.com>
Tested-by: Joe Lawrence <joe.lawrence@redhat.com>
Signed-off-by: Josh Poimboeuf <jpoimboe@kernel.org>
2025-09-17 09:03:59 -07:00
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2026-04-08 10:49:19 -04:00
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objtool/klp: Introduce klp diff subcommand for diffing object files
Add a new klp diff subcommand which performs a binary diff between two
object files and extracts changed functions into a new object which can
then be linked into a livepatch module.
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
(coming in a later patch) which injects #line directives into the
source .patch to preserve the original line numbers at compile time.
Note the end result of this subcommand is not yet functionally complete.
Livepatch needs some ELF magic which linkers don't like:
- Two relocation sections (.rela*, .klp.rela*) for the same text
section.
- Use of SHN_LIVEPATCH to mark livepatch symbols.
Unfortunately linkers tend to mangle such things. To work around that,
klp diff generates a linker-compliant intermediate binary which encodes
the relevant KLP section/reloc/symbol metadata.
After module linking, a klp post-link step (coming soon) will clean up
the mess and convert the linked .ko into a fully compliant livepatch
module.
Note this subcommand requires the diffed binaries to have been compiled
with -ffunction-sections and -fdata-sections, and processed with
'objtool --checksum'. Those constraints will be handled by a klp-build
script introduced in a later patch.
Without '-ffunction-sections -fdata-sections', reliable object diffing
would be infeasible due to toolchain limitations:
- For intra-file+intra-section references, the compiler might
occasionally generated hard-coded instruction offsets instead of
relocations.
- Section-symbol-based references can be ambiguous:
- Overlapping or zero-length symbols create ambiguity as to which
symbol is being referenced.
- A reference to the end of a symbol (e.g., checking array bounds)
can be misinterpreted as a reference to the next symbol, or vice
versa.
A potential future alternative to '-ffunction-sections -fdata-sections'
would be to introduce a toolchain option that forces symbol-based
(non-section) relocations.
Acked-by: Petr Mladek <pmladek@suse.com>
Tested-by: Joe Lawrence <joe.lawrence@redhat.com>
Signed-off-by: Josh Poimboeuf <jpoimboe@kernel.org>
2025-09-17 09:03:59 -07:00
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2026-04-29 16:02:38 -07:00
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objtool/klp: Introduce klp diff subcommand for diffing object files
Add a new klp diff subcommand which performs a binary diff between two
object files and extracts changed functions into a new object which can
then be linked into a livepatch module.
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
(coming in a later patch) which injects #line directives into the
source .patch to preserve the original line numbers at compile time.
Note the end result of this subcommand is not yet functionally complete.
Livepatch needs some ELF magic which linkers don't like:
- Two relocation sections (.rela*, .klp.rela*) for the same text
section.
- Use of SHN_LIVEPATCH to mark livepatch symbols.
Unfortunately linkers tend to mangle such things. To work around that,
klp diff generates a linker-compliant intermediate binary which encodes
the relevant KLP section/reloc/symbol metadata.
After module linking, a klp post-link step (coming soon) will clean up
the mess and convert the linked .ko into a fully compliant livepatch
module.
Note this subcommand requires the diffed binaries to have been compiled
with -ffunction-sections and -fdata-sections, and processed with
'objtool --checksum'. Those constraints will be handled by a klp-build
script introduced in a later patch.
Without '-ffunction-sections -fdata-sections', reliable object diffing
would be infeasible due to toolchain limitations:
- For intra-file+intra-section references, the compiler might
occasionally generated hard-coded instruction offsets instead of
relocations.
- Section-symbol-based references can be ambiguous:
- Overlapping or zero-length symbols create ambiguity as to which
symbol is being referenced.
- A reference to the end of a symbol (e.g., checking array bounds)
can be misinterpreted as a reference to the next symbol, or vice
versa.
A potential future alternative to '-ffunction-sections -fdata-sections'
would be to introduce a toolchain option that forces symbol-based
(non-section) relocations.
Acked-by: Petr Mladek <pmladek@suse.com>
Tested-by: Joe Lawrence <joe.lawrence@redhat.com>
Signed-off-by: Josh Poimboeuf <jpoimboe@kernel.org>
2025-09-17 09:03:59 -07:00
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2026-04-29 16:02:38 -07:00
|
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objtool/klp: Introduce klp diff subcommand for diffing object files
Add a new klp diff subcommand which performs a binary diff between two
object files and extracts changed functions into a new object which can
then be linked into a livepatch module.
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
(coming in a later patch) which injects #line directives into the
source .patch to preserve the original line numbers at compile time.
Note the end result of this subcommand is not yet functionally complete.
Livepatch needs some ELF magic which linkers don't like:
- Two relocation sections (.rela*, .klp.rela*) for the same text
section.
- Use of SHN_LIVEPATCH to mark livepatch symbols.
Unfortunately linkers tend to mangle such things. To work around that,
klp diff generates a linker-compliant intermediate binary which encodes
the relevant KLP section/reloc/symbol metadata.
After module linking, a klp post-link step (coming soon) will clean up
the mess and convert the linked .ko into a fully compliant livepatch
module.
Note this subcommand requires the diffed binaries to have been compiled
with -ffunction-sections and -fdata-sections, and processed with
'objtool --checksum'. Those constraints will be handled by a klp-build
script introduced in a later patch.
Without '-ffunction-sections -fdata-sections', reliable object diffing
would be infeasible due to toolchain limitations:
- For intra-file+intra-section references, the compiler might
occasionally generated hard-coded instruction offsets instead of
relocations.
- Section-symbol-based references can be ambiguous:
- Overlapping or zero-length symbols create ambiguity as to which
symbol is being referenced.
- A reference to the end of a symbol (e.g., checking array bounds)
can be misinterpreted as a reference to the next symbol, or vice
versa.
A potential future alternative to '-ffunction-sections -fdata-sections'
would be to introduce a toolchain option that forces symbol-based
(non-section) relocations.
Acked-by: Petr Mladek <pmladek@suse.com>
Tested-by: Joe Lawrence <joe.lawrence@redhat.com>
Signed-off-by: Josh Poimboeuf <jpoimboe@kernel.org>
2025-09-17 09:03:59 -07:00
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2026-04-29 16:02:38 -07:00
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objtool/klp: Introduce klp diff subcommand for diffing object files
Add a new klp diff subcommand which performs a binary diff between two
object files and extracts changed functions into a new object which can
then be linked into a livepatch module.
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
(coming in a later patch) which injects #line directives into the
source .patch to preserve the original line numbers at compile time.
Note the end result of this subcommand is not yet functionally complete.
Livepatch needs some ELF magic which linkers don't like:
- Two relocation sections (.rela*, .klp.rela*) for the same text
section.
- Use of SHN_LIVEPATCH to mark livepatch symbols.
Unfortunately linkers tend to mangle such things. To work around that,
klp diff generates a linker-compliant intermediate binary which encodes
the relevant KLP section/reloc/symbol metadata.
After module linking, a klp post-link step (coming soon) will clean up
the mess and convert the linked .ko into a fully compliant livepatch
module.
Note this subcommand requires the diffed binaries to have been compiled
with -ffunction-sections and -fdata-sections, and processed with
'objtool --checksum'. Those constraints will be handled by a klp-build
script introduced in a later patch.
Without '-ffunction-sections -fdata-sections', reliable object diffing
would be infeasible due to toolchain limitations:
- For intra-file+intra-section references, the compiler might
occasionally generated hard-coded instruction offsets instead of
relocations.
- Section-symbol-based references can be ambiguous:
- Overlapping or zero-length symbols create ambiguity as to which
symbol is being referenced.
- A reference to the end of a symbol (e.g., checking array bounds)
can be misinterpreted as a reference to the next symbol, or vice
versa.
A potential future alternative to '-ffunction-sections -fdata-sections'
would be to introduce a toolchain option that forces symbol-based
(non-section) relocations.
Acked-by: Petr Mladek <pmladek@suse.com>
Tested-by: Joe Lawrence <joe.lawrence@redhat.com>
Signed-off-by: Josh Poimboeuf <jpoimboe@kernel.org>
2025-09-17 09:03:59 -07:00
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2026-04-20 20:37:39 -07:00
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objtool/klp: Introduce klp diff subcommand for diffing object files
Add a new klp diff subcommand which performs a binary diff between two
object files and extracts changed functions into a new object which can
then be linked into a livepatch module.
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
(coming in a later patch) which injects #line directives into the
source .patch to preserve the original line numbers at compile time.
Note the end result of this subcommand is not yet functionally complete.
Livepatch needs some ELF magic which linkers don't like:
- Two relocation sections (.rela*, .klp.rela*) for the same text
section.
- Use of SHN_LIVEPATCH to mark livepatch symbols.
Unfortunately linkers tend to mangle such things. To work around that,
klp diff generates a linker-compliant intermediate binary which encodes
the relevant KLP section/reloc/symbol metadata.
After module linking, a klp post-link step (coming soon) will clean up
the mess and convert the linked .ko into a fully compliant livepatch
module.
Note this subcommand requires the diffed binaries to have been compiled
with -ffunction-sections and -fdata-sections, and processed with
'objtool --checksum'. Those constraints will be handled by a klp-build
script introduced in a later patch.
Without '-ffunction-sections -fdata-sections', reliable object diffing
would be infeasible due to toolchain limitations:
- For intra-file+intra-section references, the compiler might
occasionally generated hard-coded instruction offsets instead of
relocations.
- Section-symbol-based references can be ambiguous:
- Overlapping or zero-length symbols create ambiguity as to which
symbol is being referenced.
- A reference to the end of a symbol (e.g., checking array bounds)
can be misinterpreted as a reference to the next symbol, or vice
versa.
A potential future alternative to '-ffunction-sections -fdata-sections'
would be to introduce a toolchain option that forces symbol-based
(non-section) relocations.
Acked-by: Petr Mladek <pmladek@suse.com>
Tested-by: Joe Lawrence <joe.lawrence@redhat.com>
Signed-off-by: Josh Poimboeuf <jpoimboe@kernel.org>
2025-09-17 09:03:59 -07:00
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2026-04-11 12:23:07 -07:00
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2026-04-12 19:25:19 -07:00
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2026-04-20 19:20:42 -07:00
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2026-04-29 17:35:48 -07:00
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objtool/klp: Introduce klp diff subcommand for diffing object files
Add a new klp diff subcommand which performs a binary diff between two
object files and extracts changed functions into a new object which can
then be linked into a livepatch module.
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
(coming in a later patch) which injects #line directives into the
source .patch to preserve the original line numbers at compile time.
Note the end result of this subcommand is not yet functionally complete.
Livepatch needs some ELF magic which linkers don't like:
- Two relocation sections (.rela*, .klp.rela*) for the same text
section.
- Use of SHN_LIVEPATCH to mark livepatch symbols.
Unfortunately linkers tend to mangle such things. To work around that,
klp diff generates a linker-compliant intermediate binary which encodes
the relevant KLP section/reloc/symbol metadata.
After module linking, a klp post-link step (coming soon) will clean up
the mess and convert the linked .ko into a fully compliant livepatch
module.
Note this subcommand requires the diffed binaries to have been compiled
with -ffunction-sections and -fdata-sections, and processed with
'objtool --checksum'. Those constraints will be handled by a klp-build
script introduced in a later patch.
Without '-ffunction-sections -fdata-sections', reliable object diffing
would be infeasible due to toolchain limitations:
- For intra-file+intra-section references, the compiler might
occasionally generated hard-coded instruction offsets instead of
relocations.
- Section-symbol-based references can be ambiguous:
- Overlapping or zero-length symbols create ambiguity as to which
symbol is being referenced.
- A reference to the end of a symbol (e.g., checking array bounds)
can be misinterpreted as a reference to the next symbol, or vice
versa.
A potential future alternative to '-ffunction-sections -fdata-sections'
would be to introduce a toolchain option that forces symbol-based
(non-section) relocations.
Acked-by: Petr Mladek <pmladek@suse.com>
Tested-by: Joe Lawrence <joe.lawrence@redhat.com>
Signed-off-by: Josh Poimboeuf <jpoimboe@kernel.org>
2025-09-17 09:03:59 -07:00
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2026-04-12 19:25:19 -07:00
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objtool/klp: Introduce klp diff subcommand for diffing object files
Add a new klp diff subcommand which performs a binary diff between two
object files and extracts changed functions into a new object which can
then be linked into a livepatch module.
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
(coming in a later patch) which injects #line directives into the
source .patch to preserve the original line numbers at compile time.
Note the end result of this subcommand is not yet functionally complete.
Livepatch needs some ELF magic which linkers don't like:
- Two relocation sections (.rela*, .klp.rela*) for the same text
section.
- Use of SHN_LIVEPATCH to mark livepatch symbols.
Unfortunately linkers tend to mangle such things. To work around that,
klp diff generates a linker-compliant intermediate binary which encodes
the relevant KLP section/reloc/symbol metadata.
After module linking, a klp post-link step (coming soon) will clean up
the mess and convert the linked .ko into a fully compliant livepatch
module.
Note this subcommand requires the diffed binaries to have been compiled
with -ffunction-sections and -fdata-sections, and processed with
'objtool --checksum'. Those constraints will be handled by a klp-build
script introduced in a later patch.
Without '-ffunction-sections -fdata-sections', reliable object diffing
would be infeasible due to toolchain limitations:
- For intra-file+intra-section references, the compiler might
occasionally generated hard-coded instruction offsets instead of
relocations.
- Section-symbol-based references can be ambiguous:
- Overlapping or zero-length symbols create ambiguity as to which
symbol is being referenced.
- A reference to the end of a symbol (e.g., checking array bounds)
can be misinterpreted as a reference to the next symbol, or vice
versa.
A potential future alternative to '-ffunction-sections -fdata-sections'
would be to introduce a toolchain option that forces symbol-based
(non-section) relocations.
Acked-by: Petr Mladek <pmladek@suse.com>
Tested-by: Joe Lawrence <joe.lawrence@redhat.com>
Signed-off-by: Josh Poimboeuf <jpoimboe@kernel.org>
2025-09-17 09:03:59 -07:00
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2026-04-29 16:02:38 -07:00
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|
objtool/klp: Introduce klp diff subcommand for diffing object files
Add a new klp diff subcommand which performs a binary diff between two
object files and extracts changed functions into a new object which can
then be linked into a livepatch module.
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
(coming in a later patch) which injects #line directives into the
source .patch to preserve the original line numbers at compile time.
Note the end result of this subcommand is not yet functionally complete.
Livepatch needs some ELF magic which linkers don't like:
- Two relocation sections (.rela*, .klp.rela*) for the same text
section.
- Use of SHN_LIVEPATCH to mark livepatch symbols.
Unfortunately linkers tend to mangle such things. To work around that,
klp diff generates a linker-compliant intermediate binary which encodes
the relevant KLP section/reloc/symbol metadata.
After module linking, a klp post-link step (coming soon) will clean up
the mess and convert the linked .ko into a fully compliant livepatch
module.
Note this subcommand requires the diffed binaries to have been compiled
with -ffunction-sections and -fdata-sections, and processed with
'objtool --checksum'. Those constraints will be handled by a klp-build
script introduced in a later patch.
Without '-ffunction-sections -fdata-sections', reliable object diffing
would be infeasible due to toolchain limitations:
- For intra-file+intra-section references, the compiler might
occasionally generated hard-coded instruction offsets instead of
relocations.
- Section-symbol-based references can be ambiguous:
- Overlapping or zero-length symbols create ambiguity as to which
symbol is being referenced.
- A reference to the end of a symbol (e.g., checking array bounds)
can be misinterpreted as a reference to the next symbol, or vice
versa.
A potential future alternative to '-ffunction-sections -fdata-sections'
would be to introduce a toolchain option that forces symbol-based
(non-section) relocations.
Acked-by: Petr Mladek <pmladek@suse.com>
Tested-by: Joe Lawrence <joe.lawrence@redhat.com>
Signed-off-by: Josh Poimboeuf <jpoimboe@kernel.org>
2025-09-17 09:03:59 -07:00
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2026-04-29 17:35:48 -07:00
|
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|
2026-04-20 19:20:42 -07:00
|
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|
2026-04-11 12:23:07 -07:00
|
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|
objtool/klp: Introduce klp diff subcommand for diffing object files
Add a new klp diff subcommand which performs a binary diff between two
object files and extracts changed functions into a new object which can
then be linked into a livepatch module.
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
(coming in a later patch) which injects #line directives into the
source .patch to preserve the original line numbers at compile time.
Note the end result of this subcommand is not yet functionally complete.
Livepatch needs some ELF magic which linkers don't like:
- Two relocation sections (.rela*, .klp.rela*) for the same text
section.
- Use of SHN_LIVEPATCH to mark livepatch symbols.
Unfortunately linkers tend to mangle such things. To work around that,
klp diff generates a linker-compliant intermediate binary which encodes
the relevant KLP section/reloc/symbol metadata.
After module linking, a klp post-link step (coming soon) will clean up
the mess and convert the linked .ko into a fully compliant livepatch
module.
Note this subcommand requires the diffed binaries to have been compiled
with -ffunction-sections and -fdata-sections, and processed with
'objtool --checksum'. Those constraints will be handled by a klp-build
script introduced in a later patch.
Without '-ffunction-sections -fdata-sections', reliable object diffing
would be infeasible due to toolchain limitations:
- For intra-file+intra-section references, the compiler might
occasionally generated hard-coded instruction offsets instead of
relocations.
- Section-symbol-based references can be ambiguous:
- Overlapping or zero-length symbols create ambiguity as to which
symbol is being referenced.
- A reference to the end of a symbol (e.g., checking array bounds)
can be misinterpreted as a reference to the next symbol, or vice
versa.
A potential future alternative to '-ffunction-sections -fdata-sections'
would be to introduce a toolchain option that forces symbol-based
(non-section) relocations.
Acked-by: Petr Mladek <pmladek@suse.com>
Tested-by: Joe Lawrence <joe.lawrence@redhat.com>
Signed-off-by: Josh Poimboeuf <jpoimboe@kernel.org>
2025-09-17 09:03:59 -07:00
|
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|
|
2026-04-20 19:20:42 -07:00
|
|
|
|
objtool/klp: Introduce klp diff subcommand for diffing object files
Add a new klp diff subcommand which performs a binary diff between two
object files and extracts changed functions into a new object which can
then be linked into a livepatch module.
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
(coming in a later patch) which injects #line directives into the
source .patch to preserve the original line numbers at compile time.
Note the end result of this subcommand is not yet functionally complete.
Livepatch needs some ELF magic which linkers don't like:
- Two relocation sections (.rela*, .klp.rela*) for the same text
section.
- Use of SHN_LIVEPATCH to mark livepatch symbols.
Unfortunately linkers tend to mangle such things. To work around that,
klp diff generates a linker-compliant intermediate binary which encodes
the relevant KLP section/reloc/symbol metadata.
After module linking, a klp post-link step (coming soon) will clean up
the mess and convert the linked .ko into a fully compliant livepatch
module.
Note this subcommand requires the diffed binaries to have been compiled
with -ffunction-sections and -fdata-sections, and processed with
'objtool --checksum'. Those constraints will be handled by a klp-build
script introduced in a later patch.
Without '-ffunction-sections -fdata-sections', reliable object diffing
would be infeasible due to toolchain limitations:
- For intra-file+intra-section references, the compiler might
occasionally generated hard-coded instruction offsets instead of
relocations.
- Section-symbol-based references can be ambiguous:
- Overlapping or zero-length symbols create ambiguity as to which
symbol is being referenced.
- A reference to the end of a symbol (e.g., checking array bounds)
can be misinterpreted as a reference to the next symbol, or vice
versa.
A potential future alternative to '-ffunction-sections -fdata-sections'
would be to introduce a toolchain option that forces symbol-based
(non-section) relocations.
Acked-by: Petr Mladek <pmladek@suse.com>
Tested-by: Joe Lawrence <joe.lawrence@redhat.com>
Signed-off-by: Josh Poimboeuf <jpoimboe@kernel.org>
2025-09-17 09:03:59 -07:00
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objtool/klp: Rewrite symbol correlation algorithm
Rewrite the symbol correlation code, using a tiered list of
deterministic strategies in a loop. For duplicately named symbols, each
tier applies a filter with the goal of finding a 1:1 deterministic
correlation between the original and patched version of the symbol.
The three matching strategies are:
find_twin(): A funnel of progressively tighter filters. Candidates
with the same demangled name are counted at four levels: name, scope
(local-vs-global), file (strict file association), and checksum
(unchanged functions). The widest level that yields a 1:1 match wins,
narrower levels are only tried when the wider level is ambiguous.
find_twin_suffixed(): Uses already-correlated LLVM symbol pairs to map
.llvm.<hash> suffixes from orig to patched. Because all promoted
symbols from the same TU share the same hash, one correlated pair
seeds the mapping for the entire TU.
find_twin_positional(): Last resort, matches symbols by position among
same-named candidates, similar to livepatch sympos. Used for data
objects like __quirk variables where no deterministic filter can
distinguish the candidates.
Overall this works much better than the existing algorithm, particularly
with LTO kernels.
Acked-by: Song Liu <song@kernel.org>
Signed-off-by: Josh Poimboeuf <jpoimboe@kernel.org>
2026-04-09 20:51:27 -07:00
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2026-03-05 15:15:30 -08:00
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objtool/klp: Rewrite symbol correlation algorithm
Rewrite the symbol correlation code, using a tiered list of
deterministic strategies in a loop. For duplicately named symbols, each
tier applies a filter with the goal of finding a 1:1 deterministic
correlation between the original and patched version of the symbol.
The three matching strategies are:
find_twin(): A funnel of progressively tighter filters. Candidates
with the same demangled name are counted at four levels: name, scope
(local-vs-global), file (strict file association), and checksum
(unchanged functions). The widest level that yields a 1:1 match wins,
narrower levels are only tried when the wider level is ambiguous.
find_twin_suffixed(): Uses already-correlated LLVM symbol pairs to map
.llvm.<hash> suffixes from orig to patched. Because all promoted
symbols from the same TU share the same hash, one correlated pair
seeds the mapping for the entire TU.
find_twin_positional(): Last resort, matches symbols by position among
same-named candidates, similar to livepatch sympos. Used for data
objects like __quirk variables where no deterministic filter can
distinguish the candidates.
Overall this works much better than the existing algorithm, particularly
with LTO kernels.
Acked-by: Song Liu <song@kernel.org>
Signed-off-by: Josh Poimboeuf <jpoimboe@kernel.org>
2026-04-09 20:51:27 -07:00
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2026-03-05 15:15:30 -08:00
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objtool/klp: Rewrite symbol correlation algorithm
Rewrite the symbol correlation code, using a tiered list of
deterministic strategies in a loop. For duplicately named symbols, each
tier applies a filter with the goal of finding a 1:1 deterministic
correlation between the original and patched version of the symbol.
The three matching strategies are:
find_twin(): A funnel of progressively tighter filters. Candidates
with the same demangled name are counted at four levels: name, scope
(local-vs-global), file (strict file association), and checksum
(unchanged functions). The widest level that yields a 1:1 match wins,
narrower levels are only tried when the wider level is ambiguous.
find_twin_suffixed(): Uses already-correlated LLVM symbol pairs to map
.llvm.<hash> suffixes from orig to patched. Because all promoted
symbols from the same TU share the same hash, one correlated pair
seeds the mapping for the entire TU.
find_twin_positional(): Last resort, matches symbols by position among
same-named candidates, similar to livepatch sympos. Used for data
objects like __quirk variables where no deterministic filter can
distinguish the candidates.
Overall this works much better than the existing algorithm, particularly
with LTO kernels.
Acked-by: Song Liu <song@kernel.org>
Signed-off-by: Josh Poimboeuf <jpoimboe@kernel.org>
2026-04-09 20:51:27 -07:00
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2026-04-19 21:06:28 -07:00
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objtool/klp: Rewrite symbol correlation algorithm
Rewrite the symbol correlation code, using a tiered list of
deterministic strategies in a loop. For duplicately named symbols, each
tier applies a filter with the goal of finding a 1:1 deterministic
correlation between the original and patched version of the symbol.
The three matching strategies are:
find_twin(): A funnel of progressively tighter filters. Candidates
with the same demangled name are counted at four levels: name, scope
(local-vs-global), file (strict file association), and checksum
(unchanged functions). The widest level that yields a 1:1 match wins,
narrower levels are only tried when the wider level is ambiguous.
find_twin_suffixed(): Uses already-correlated LLVM symbol pairs to map
.llvm.<hash> suffixes from orig to patched. Because all promoted
symbols from the same TU share the same hash, one correlated pair
seeds the mapping for the entire TU.
find_twin_positional(): Last resort, matches symbols by position among
same-named candidates, similar to livepatch sympos. Used for data
objects like __quirk variables where no deterministic filter can
distinguish the candidates.
Overall this works much better than the existing algorithm, particularly
with LTO kernels.
Acked-by: Song Liu <song@kernel.org>
Signed-off-by: Josh Poimboeuf <jpoimboe@kernel.org>
2026-04-09 20:51:27 -07:00
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2026-04-12 22:41:23 -07:00
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objtool/klp: Rewrite symbol correlation algorithm
Rewrite the symbol correlation code, using a tiered list of
deterministic strategies in a loop. For duplicately named symbols, each
tier applies a filter with the goal of finding a 1:1 deterministic
correlation between the original and patched version of the symbol.
The three matching strategies are:
find_twin(): A funnel of progressively tighter filters. Candidates
with the same demangled name are counted at four levels: name, scope
(local-vs-global), file (strict file association), and checksum
(unchanged functions). The widest level that yields a 1:1 match wins,
narrower levels are only tried when the wider level is ambiguous.
find_twin_suffixed(): Uses already-correlated LLVM symbol pairs to map
.llvm.<hash> suffixes from orig to patched. Because all promoted
symbols from the same TU share the same hash, one correlated pair
seeds the mapping for the entire TU.
find_twin_positional(): Last resort, matches symbols by position among
same-named candidates, similar to livepatch sympos. Used for data
objects like __quirk variables where no deterministic filter can
distinguish the candidates.
Overall this works much better than the existing algorithm, particularly
with LTO kernels.
Acked-by: Song Liu <song@kernel.org>
Signed-off-by: Josh Poimboeuf <jpoimboe@kernel.org>
2026-04-09 20:51:27 -07:00
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2026-04-12 22:41:23 -07:00
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objtool/klp: Rewrite symbol correlation algorithm
Rewrite the symbol correlation code, using a tiered list of
deterministic strategies in a loop. For duplicately named symbols, each
tier applies a filter with the goal of finding a 1:1 deterministic
correlation between the original and patched version of the symbol.
The three matching strategies are:
find_twin(): A funnel of progressively tighter filters. Candidates
with the same demangled name are counted at four levels: name, scope
(local-vs-global), file (strict file association), and checksum
(unchanged functions). The widest level that yields a 1:1 match wins,
narrower levels are only tried when the wider level is ambiguous.
find_twin_suffixed(): Uses already-correlated LLVM symbol pairs to map
.llvm.<hash> suffixes from orig to patched. Because all promoted
symbols from the same TU share the same hash, one correlated pair
seeds the mapping for the entire TU.
find_twin_positional(): Last resort, matches symbols by position among
same-named candidates, similar to livepatch sympos. Used for data
objects like __quirk variables where no deterministic filter can
distinguish the candidates.
Overall this works much better than the existing algorithm, particularly
with LTO kernels.
Acked-by: Song Liu <song@kernel.org>
Signed-off-by: Josh Poimboeuf <jpoimboe@kernel.org>
2026-04-09 20:51:27 -07:00
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2026-04-19 21:06:28 -07:00
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objtool/klp: Rewrite symbol correlation algorithm
Rewrite the symbol correlation code, using a tiered list of
deterministic strategies in a loop. For duplicately named symbols, each
tier applies a filter with the goal of finding a 1:1 deterministic
correlation between the original and patched version of the symbol.
The three matching strategies are:
find_twin(): A funnel of progressively tighter filters. Candidates
with the same demangled name are counted at four levels: name, scope
(local-vs-global), file (strict file association), and checksum
(unchanged functions). The widest level that yields a 1:1 match wins,
narrower levels are only tried when the wider level is ambiguous.
find_twin_suffixed(): Uses already-correlated LLVM symbol pairs to map
.llvm.<hash> suffixes from orig to patched. Because all promoted
symbols from the same TU share the same hash, one correlated pair
seeds the mapping for the entire TU.
find_twin_positional(): Last resort, matches symbols by position among
same-named candidates, similar to livepatch sympos. Used for data
objects like __quirk variables where no deterministic filter can
distinguish the candidates.
Overall this works much better than the existing algorithm, particularly
with LTO kernels.
Acked-by: Song Liu <song@kernel.org>
Signed-off-by: Josh Poimboeuf <jpoimboe@kernel.org>
2026-04-09 20:51:27 -07:00
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2026-04-20 22:58:37 -07:00
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objtool/klp: Rewrite symbol correlation algorithm
Rewrite the symbol correlation code, using a tiered list of
deterministic strategies in a loop. For duplicately named symbols, each
tier applies a filter with the goal of finding a 1:1 deterministic
correlation between the original and patched version of the symbol.
The three matching strategies are:
find_twin(): A funnel of progressively tighter filters. Candidates
with the same demangled name are counted at four levels: name, scope
(local-vs-global), file (strict file association), and checksum
(unchanged functions). The widest level that yields a 1:1 match wins,
narrower levels are only tried when the wider level is ambiguous.
find_twin_suffixed(): Uses already-correlated LLVM symbol pairs to map
.llvm.<hash> suffixes from orig to patched. Because all promoted
symbols from the same TU share the same hash, one correlated pair
seeds the mapping for the entire TU.
find_twin_positional(): Last resort, matches symbols by position among
same-named candidates, similar to livepatch sympos. Used for data
objects like __quirk variables where no deterministic filter can
distinguish the candidates.
Overall this works much better than the existing algorithm, particularly
with LTO kernels.
Acked-by: Song Liu <song@kernel.org>
Signed-off-by: Josh Poimboeuf <jpoimboe@kernel.org>
2026-04-09 20:51:27 -07:00
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2026-03-05 15:15:30 -08:00
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2026-04-12 22:41:23 -07:00
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2026-03-05 15:15:30 -08:00
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objtool/klp: Introduce klp diff subcommand for diffing object files
Add a new klp diff subcommand which performs a binary diff between two
object files and extracts changed functions into a new object which can
then be linked into a livepatch module.
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
(coming in a later patch) which injects #line directives into the
source .patch to preserve the original line numbers at compile time.
Note the end result of this subcommand is not yet functionally complete.
Livepatch needs some ELF magic which linkers don't like:
- Two relocation sections (.rela*, .klp.rela*) for the same text
section.
- Use of SHN_LIVEPATCH to mark livepatch symbols.
Unfortunately linkers tend to mangle such things. To work around that,
klp diff generates a linker-compliant intermediate binary which encodes
the relevant KLP section/reloc/symbol metadata.
After module linking, a klp post-link step (coming soon) will clean up
the mess and convert the linked .ko into a fully compliant livepatch
module.
Note this subcommand requires the diffed binaries to have been compiled
with -ffunction-sections and -fdata-sections, and processed with
'objtool --checksum'. Those constraints will be handled by a klp-build
script introduced in a later patch.
Without '-ffunction-sections -fdata-sections', reliable object diffing
would be infeasible due to toolchain limitations:
- For intra-file+intra-section references, the compiler might
occasionally generated hard-coded instruction offsets instead of
relocations.
- Section-symbol-based references can be ambiguous:
- Overlapping or zero-length symbols create ambiguity as to which
symbol is being referenced.
- A reference to the end of a symbol (e.g., checking array bounds)
can be misinterpreted as a reference to the next symbol, or vice
versa.
A potential future alternative to '-ffunction-sections -fdata-sections'
would be to introduce a toolchain option that forces symbol-based
(non-section) relocations.
Acked-by: Petr Mladek <pmladek@suse.com>
Tested-by: Joe Lawrence <joe.lawrence@redhat.com>
Signed-off-by: Josh Poimboeuf <jpoimboe@kernel.org>
2025-09-17 09:03:59 -07:00
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objtool/klp: Rewrite symbol correlation algorithm
Rewrite the symbol correlation code, using a tiered list of
deterministic strategies in a loop. For duplicately named symbols, each
tier applies a filter with the goal of finding a 1:1 deterministic
correlation between the original and patched version of the symbol.
The three matching strategies are:
find_twin(): A funnel of progressively tighter filters. Candidates
with the same demangled name are counted at four levels: name, scope
(local-vs-global), file (strict file association), and checksum
(unchanged functions). The widest level that yields a 1:1 match wins,
narrower levels are only tried when the wider level is ambiguous.
find_twin_suffixed(): Uses already-correlated LLVM symbol pairs to map
.llvm.<hash> suffixes from orig to patched. Because all promoted
symbols from the same TU share the same hash, one correlated pair
seeds the mapping for the entire TU.
find_twin_positional(): Last resort, matches symbols by position among
same-named candidates, similar to livepatch sympos. Used for data
objects like __quirk variables where no deterministic filter can
distinguish the candidates.
Overall this works much better than the existing algorithm, particularly
with LTO kernels.
Acked-by: Song Liu <song@kernel.org>
Signed-off-by: Josh Poimboeuf <jpoimboe@kernel.org>
2026-04-09 20:51:27 -07:00
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2026-04-19 21:06:28 -07:00
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objtool/klp: Rewrite symbol correlation algorithm
Rewrite the symbol correlation code, using a tiered list of
deterministic strategies in a loop. For duplicately named symbols, each
tier applies a filter with the goal of finding a 1:1 deterministic
correlation between the original and patched version of the symbol.
The three matching strategies are:
find_twin(): A funnel of progressively tighter filters. Candidates
with the same demangled name are counted at four levels: name, scope
(local-vs-global), file (strict file association), and checksum
(unchanged functions). The widest level that yields a 1:1 match wins,
narrower levels are only tried when the wider level is ambiguous.
find_twin_suffixed(): Uses already-correlated LLVM symbol pairs to map
.llvm.<hash> suffixes from orig to patched. Because all promoted
symbols from the same TU share the same hash, one correlated pair
seeds the mapping for the entire TU.
find_twin_positional(): Last resort, matches symbols by position among
same-named candidates, similar to livepatch sympos. Used for data
objects like __quirk variables where no deterministic filter can
distinguish the candidates.
Overall this works much better than the existing algorithm, particularly
with LTO kernels.
Acked-by: Song Liu <song@kernel.org>
Signed-off-by: Josh Poimboeuf <jpoimboe@kernel.org>
2026-04-09 20:51:27 -07:00
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2026-04-20 22:58:37 -07:00
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objtool/klp: Rewrite symbol correlation algorithm
Rewrite the symbol correlation code, using a tiered list of
deterministic strategies in a loop. For duplicately named symbols, each
tier applies a filter with the goal of finding a 1:1 deterministic
correlation between the original and patched version of the symbol.
The three matching strategies are:
find_twin(): A funnel of progressively tighter filters. Candidates
with the same demangled name are counted at four levels: name, scope
(local-vs-global), file (strict file association), and checksum
(unchanged functions). The widest level that yields a 1:1 match wins,
narrower levels are only tried when the wider level is ambiguous.
find_twin_suffixed(): Uses already-correlated LLVM symbol pairs to map
.llvm.<hash> suffixes from orig to patched. Because all promoted
symbols from the same TU share the same hash, one correlated pair
seeds the mapping for the entire TU.
find_twin_positional(): Last resort, matches symbols by position among
same-named candidates, similar to livepatch sympos. Used for data
objects like __quirk variables where no deterministic filter can
distinguish the candidates.
Overall this works much better than the existing algorithm, particularly
with LTO kernels.
Acked-by: Song Liu <song@kernel.org>
Signed-off-by: Josh Poimboeuf <jpoimboe@kernel.org>
2026-04-09 20:51:27 -07:00
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2026-04-20 22:58:37 -07:00
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objtool/klp: Rewrite symbol correlation algorithm
Rewrite the symbol correlation code, using a tiered list of
deterministic strategies in a loop. For duplicately named symbols, each
tier applies a filter with the goal of finding a 1:1 deterministic
correlation between the original and patched version of the symbol.
The three matching strategies are:
find_twin(): A funnel of progressively tighter filters. Candidates
with the same demangled name are counted at four levels: name, scope
(local-vs-global), file (strict file association), and checksum
(unchanged functions). The widest level that yields a 1:1 match wins,
narrower levels are only tried when the wider level is ambiguous.
find_twin_suffixed(): Uses already-correlated LLVM symbol pairs to map
.llvm.<hash> suffixes from orig to patched. Because all promoted
symbols from the same TU share the same hash, one correlated pair
seeds the mapping for the entire TU.
find_twin_positional(): Last resort, matches symbols by position among
same-named candidates, similar to livepatch sympos. Used for data
objects like __quirk variables where no deterministic filter can
distinguish the candidates.
Overall this works much better than the existing algorithm, particularly
with LTO kernels.
Acked-by: Song Liu <song@kernel.org>
Signed-off-by: Josh Poimboeuf <jpoimboe@kernel.org>
2026-04-09 20:51:27 -07:00
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2026-04-19 21:06:28 -07:00
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objtool/klp: Rewrite symbol correlation algorithm
Rewrite the symbol correlation code, using a tiered list of
deterministic strategies in a loop. For duplicately named symbols, each
tier applies a filter with the goal of finding a 1:1 deterministic
correlation between the original and patched version of the symbol.
The three matching strategies are:
find_twin(): A funnel of progressively tighter filters. Candidates
with the same demangled name are counted at four levels: name, scope
(local-vs-global), file (strict file association), and checksum
(unchanged functions). The widest level that yields a 1:1 match wins,
narrower levels are only tried when the wider level is ambiguous.
find_twin_suffixed(): Uses already-correlated LLVM symbol pairs to map
.llvm.<hash> suffixes from orig to patched. Because all promoted
symbols from the same TU share the same hash, one correlated pair
seeds the mapping for the entire TU.
find_twin_positional(): Last resort, matches symbols by position among
same-named candidates, similar to livepatch sympos. Used for data
objects like __quirk variables where no deterministic filter can
distinguish the candidates.
Overall this works much better than the existing algorithm, particularly
with LTO kernels.
Acked-by: Song Liu <song@kernel.org>
Signed-off-by: Josh Poimboeuf <jpoimboe@kernel.org>
2026-04-09 20:51:27 -07:00
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2026-04-19 21:06:28 -07:00
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objtool/klp: Rewrite symbol correlation algorithm
Rewrite the symbol correlation code, using a tiered list of
deterministic strategies in a loop. For duplicately named symbols, each
tier applies a filter with the goal of finding a 1:1 deterministic
correlation between the original and patched version of the symbol.
The three matching strategies are:
find_twin(): A funnel of progressively tighter filters. Candidates
with the same demangled name are counted at four levels: name, scope
(local-vs-global), file (strict file association), and checksum
(unchanged functions). The widest level that yields a 1:1 match wins,
narrower levels are only tried when the wider level is ambiguous.
find_twin_suffixed(): Uses already-correlated LLVM symbol pairs to map
.llvm.<hash> suffixes from orig to patched. Because all promoted
symbols from the same TU share the same hash, one correlated pair
seeds the mapping for the entire TU.
find_twin_positional(): Last resort, matches symbols by position among
same-named candidates, similar to livepatch sympos. Used for data
objects like __quirk variables where no deterministic filter can
distinguish the candidates.
Overall this works much better than the existing algorithm, particularly
with LTO kernels.
Acked-by: Song Liu <song@kernel.org>
Signed-off-by: Josh Poimboeuf <jpoimboe@kernel.org>
2026-04-09 20:51:27 -07:00
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2026-04-20 22:58:37 -07:00
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objtool/klp: Rewrite symbol correlation algorithm
Rewrite the symbol correlation code, using a tiered list of
deterministic strategies in a loop. For duplicately named symbols, each
tier applies a filter with the goal of finding a 1:1 deterministic
correlation between the original and patched version of the symbol.
The three matching strategies are:
find_twin(): A funnel of progressively tighter filters. Candidates
with the same demangled name are counted at four levels: name, scope
(local-vs-global), file (strict file association), and checksum
(unchanged functions). The widest level that yields a 1:1 match wins,
narrower levels are only tried when the wider level is ambiguous.
find_twin_suffixed(): Uses already-correlated LLVM symbol pairs to map
.llvm.<hash> suffixes from orig to patched. Because all promoted
symbols from the same TU share the same hash, one correlated pair
seeds the mapping for the entire TU.
find_twin_positional(): Last resort, matches symbols by position among
same-named candidates, similar to livepatch sympos. Used for data
objects like __quirk variables where no deterministic filter can
distinguish the candidates.
Overall this works much better than the existing algorithm, particularly
with LTO kernels.
Acked-by: Song Liu <song@kernel.org>
Signed-off-by: Josh Poimboeuf <jpoimboe@kernel.org>
2026-04-09 20:51:27 -07:00
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objtool/klp: Introduce klp diff subcommand for diffing object files
Add a new klp diff subcommand which performs a binary diff between two
object files and extracts changed functions into a new object which can
then be linked into a livepatch module.
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
(coming in a later patch) which injects #line directives into the
source .patch to preserve the original line numbers at compile time.
Note the end result of this subcommand is not yet functionally complete.
Livepatch needs some ELF magic which linkers don't like:
- Two relocation sections (.rela*, .klp.rela*) for the same text
section.
- Use of SHN_LIVEPATCH to mark livepatch symbols.
Unfortunately linkers tend to mangle such things. To work around that,
klp diff generates a linker-compliant intermediate binary which encodes
the relevant KLP section/reloc/symbol metadata.
After module linking, a klp post-link step (coming soon) will clean up
the mess and convert the linked .ko into a fully compliant livepatch
module.
Note this subcommand requires the diffed binaries to have been compiled
with -ffunction-sections and -fdata-sections, and processed with
'objtool --checksum'. Those constraints will be handled by a klp-build
script introduced in a later patch.
Without '-ffunction-sections -fdata-sections', reliable object diffing
would be infeasible due to toolchain limitations:
- For intra-file+intra-section references, the compiler might
occasionally generated hard-coded instruction offsets instead of
relocations.
- Section-symbol-based references can be ambiguous:
- Overlapping or zero-length symbols create ambiguity as to which
symbol is being referenced.
- A reference to the end of a symbol (e.g., checking array bounds)
can be misinterpreted as a reference to the next symbol, or vice
versa.
A potential future alternative to '-ffunction-sections -fdata-sections'
would be to introduce a toolchain option that forces symbol-based
(non-section) relocations.
Acked-by: Petr Mladek <pmladek@suse.com>
Tested-by: Joe Lawrence <joe.lawrence@redhat.com>
Signed-off-by: Josh Poimboeuf <jpoimboe@kernel.org>
2025-09-17 09:03:59 -07:00
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objtool/klp: Rewrite symbol correlation algorithm
Rewrite the symbol correlation code, using a tiered list of
deterministic strategies in a loop. For duplicately named symbols, each
tier applies a filter with the goal of finding a 1:1 deterministic
correlation between the original and patched version of the symbol.
The three matching strategies are:
find_twin(): A funnel of progressively tighter filters. Candidates
with the same demangled name are counted at four levels: name, scope
(local-vs-global), file (strict file association), and checksum
(unchanged functions). The widest level that yields a 1:1 match wins,
narrower levels are only tried when the wider level is ambiguous.
find_twin_suffixed(): Uses already-correlated LLVM symbol pairs to map
.llvm.<hash> suffixes from orig to patched. Because all promoted
symbols from the same TU share the same hash, one correlated pair
seeds the mapping for the entire TU.
find_twin_positional(): Last resort, matches symbols by position among
same-named candidates, similar to livepatch sympos. Used for data
objects like __quirk variables where no deterministic filter can
distinguish the candidates.
Overall this works much better than the existing algorithm, particularly
with LTO kernels.
Acked-by: Song Liu <song@kernel.org>
Signed-off-by: Josh Poimboeuf <jpoimboe@kernel.org>
2026-04-09 20:51:27 -07:00
|
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|
objtool/klp: Introduce klp diff subcommand for diffing object files
Add a new klp diff subcommand which performs a binary diff between two
object files and extracts changed functions into a new object which can
then be linked into a livepatch module.
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
(coming in a later patch) which injects #line directives into the
source .patch to preserve the original line numbers at compile time.
Note the end result of this subcommand is not yet functionally complete.
Livepatch needs some ELF magic which linkers don't like:
- Two relocation sections (.rela*, .klp.rela*) for the same text
section.
- Use of SHN_LIVEPATCH to mark livepatch symbols.
Unfortunately linkers tend to mangle such things. To work around that,
klp diff generates a linker-compliant intermediate binary which encodes
the relevant KLP section/reloc/symbol metadata.
After module linking, a klp post-link step (coming soon) will clean up
the mess and convert the linked .ko into a fully compliant livepatch
module.
Note this subcommand requires the diffed binaries to have been compiled
with -ffunction-sections and -fdata-sections, and processed with
'objtool --checksum'. Those constraints will be handled by a klp-build
script introduced in a later patch.
Without '-ffunction-sections -fdata-sections', reliable object diffing
would be infeasible due to toolchain limitations:
- For intra-file+intra-section references, the compiler might
occasionally generated hard-coded instruction offsets instead of
relocations.
- Section-symbol-based references can be ambiguous:
- Overlapping or zero-length symbols create ambiguity as to which
symbol is being referenced.
- A reference to the end of a symbol (e.g., checking array bounds)
can be misinterpreted as a reference to the next symbol, or vice
versa.
A potential future alternative to '-ffunction-sections -fdata-sections'
would be to introduce a toolchain option that forces symbol-based
(non-section) relocations.
Acked-by: Petr Mladek <pmladek@suse.com>
Tested-by: Joe Lawrence <joe.lawrence@redhat.com>
Signed-off-by: Josh Poimboeuf <jpoimboe@kernel.org>
2025-09-17 09:03:59 -07:00
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2026-04-19 21:06:28 -07:00
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objtool/klp: Rewrite symbol correlation algorithm
Rewrite the symbol correlation code, using a tiered list of
deterministic strategies in a loop. For duplicately named symbols, each
tier applies a filter with the goal of finding a 1:1 deterministic
correlation between the original and patched version of the symbol.
The three matching strategies are:
find_twin(): A funnel of progressively tighter filters. Candidates
with the same demangled name are counted at four levels: name, scope
(local-vs-global), file (strict file association), and checksum
(unchanged functions). The widest level that yields a 1:1 match wins,
narrower levels are only tried when the wider level is ambiguous.
find_twin_suffixed(): Uses already-correlated LLVM symbol pairs to map
.llvm.<hash> suffixes from orig to patched. Because all promoted
symbols from the same TU share the same hash, one correlated pair
seeds the mapping for the entire TU.
find_twin_positional(): Last resort, matches symbols by position among
same-named candidates, similar to livepatch sympos. Used for data
objects like __quirk variables where no deterministic filter can
distinguish the candidates.
Overall this works much better than the existing algorithm, particularly
with LTO kernels.
Acked-by: Song Liu <song@kernel.org>
Signed-off-by: Josh Poimboeuf <jpoimboe@kernel.org>
2026-04-09 20:51:27 -07:00
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2026-02-02 10:01:08 -08:00
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objtool/klp: Introduce klp diff subcommand for diffing object files
Add a new klp diff subcommand which performs a binary diff between two
object files and extracts changed functions into a new object which can
then be linked into a livepatch module.
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
(coming in a later patch) which injects #line directives into the
source .patch to preserve the original line numbers at compile time.
Note the end result of this subcommand is not yet functionally complete.
Livepatch needs some ELF magic which linkers don't like:
- Two relocation sections (.rela*, .klp.rela*) for the same text
section.
- Use of SHN_LIVEPATCH to mark livepatch symbols.
Unfortunately linkers tend to mangle such things. To work around that,
klp diff generates a linker-compliant intermediate binary which encodes
the relevant KLP section/reloc/symbol metadata.
After module linking, a klp post-link step (coming soon) will clean up
the mess and convert the linked .ko into a fully compliant livepatch
module.
Note this subcommand requires the diffed binaries to have been compiled
with -ffunction-sections and -fdata-sections, and processed with
'objtool --checksum'. Those constraints will be handled by a klp-build
script introduced in a later patch.
Without '-ffunction-sections -fdata-sections', reliable object diffing
would be infeasible due to toolchain limitations:
- For intra-file+intra-section references, the compiler might
occasionally generated hard-coded instruction offsets instead of
relocations.
- Section-symbol-based references can be ambiguous:
- Overlapping or zero-length symbols create ambiguity as to which
symbol is being referenced.
- A reference to the end of a symbol (e.g., checking array bounds)
can be misinterpreted as a reference to the next symbol, or vice
versa.
A potential future alternative to '-ffunction-sections -fdata-sections'
would be to introduce a toolchain option that forces symbol-based
(non-section) relocations.
Acked-by: Petr Mladek <pmladek@suse.com>
Tested-by: Joe Lawrence <joe.lawrence@redhat.com>
Signed-off-by: Josh Poimboeuf <jpoimboe@kernel.org>
2025-09-17 09:03:59 -07:00
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2026-03-05 15:15:30 -08:00
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objtool/klp: Rewrite symbol correlation algorithm
Rewrite the symbol correlation code, using a tiered list of
deterministic strategies in a loop. For duplicately named symbols, each
tier applies a filter with the goal of finding a 1:1 deterministic
correlation between the original and patched version of the symbol.
The three matching strategies are:
find_twin(): A funnel of progressively tighter filters. Candidates
with the same demangled name are counted at four levels: name, scope
(local-vs-global), file (strict file association), and checksum
(unchanged functions). The widest level that yields a 1:1 match wins,
narrower levels are only tried when the wider level is ambiguous.
find_twin_suffixed(): Uses already-correlated LLVM symbol pairs to map
.llvm.<hash> suffixes from orig to patched. Because all promoted
symbols from the same TU share the same hash, one correlated pair
seeds the mapping for the entire TU.
find_twin_positional(): Last resort, matches symbols by position among
same-named candidates, similar to livepatch sympos. Used for data
objects like __quirk variables where no deterministic filter can
distinguish the candidates.
Overall this works much better than the existing algorithm, particularly
with LTO kernels.
Acked-by: Song Liu <song@kernel.org>
Signed-off-by: Josh Poimboeuf <jpoimboe@kernel.org>
2026-04-09 20:51:27 -07:00
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2026-03-05 15:15:30 -08:00
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objtool/klp: Rewrite symbol correlation algorithm
Rewrite the symbol correlation code, using a tiered list of
deterministic strategies in a loop. For duplicately named symbols, each
tier applies a filter with the goal of finding a 1:1 deterministic
correlation between the original and patched version of the symbol.
The three matching strategies are:
find_twin(): A funnel of progressively tighter filters. Candidates
with the same demangled name are counted at four levels: name, scope
(local-vs-global), file (strict file association), and checksum
(unchanged functions). The widest level that yields a 1:1 match wins,
narrower levels are only tried when the wider level is ambiguous.
find_twin_suffixed(): Uses already-correlated LLVM symbol pairs to map
.llvm.<hash> suffixes from orig to patched. Because all promoted
symbols from the same TU share the same hash, one correlated pair
seeds the mapping for the entire TU.
find_twin_positional(): Last resort, matches symbols by position among
same-named candidates, similar to livepatch sympos. Used for data
objects like __quirk variables where no deterministic filter can
distinguish the candidates.
Overall this works much better than the existing algorithm, particularly
with LTO kernels.
Acked-by: Song Liu <song@kernel.org>
Signed-off-by: Josh Poimboeuf <jpoimboe@kernel.org>
2026-04-09 20:51:27 -07:00
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2026-04-19 21:06:28 -07:00
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objtool/klp: Rewrite symbol correlation algorithm
Rewrite the symbol correlation code, using a tiered list of
deterministic strategies in a loop. For duplicately named symbols, each
tier applies a filter with the goal of finding a 1:1 deterministic
correlation between the original and patched version of the symbol.
The three matching strategies are:
find_twin(): A funnel of progressively tighter filters. Candidates
with the same demangled name are counted at four levels: name, scope
(local-vs-global), file (strict file association), and checksum
(unchanged functions). The widest level that yields a 1:1 match wins,
narrower levels are only tried when the wider level is ambiguous.
find_twin_suffixed(): Uses already-correlated LLVM symbol pairs to map
.llvm.<hash> suffixes from orig to patched. Because all promoted
symbols from the same TU share the same hash, one correlated pair
seeds the mapping for the entire TU.
find_twin_positional(): Last resort, matches symbols by position among
same-named candidates, similar to livepatch sympos. Used for data
objects like __quirk variables where no deterministic filter can
distinguish the candidates.
Overall this works much better than the existing algorithm, particularly
with LTO kernels.
Acked-by: Song Liu <song@kernel.org>
Signed-off-by: Josh Poimboeuf <jpoimboe@kernel.org>
2026-04-09 20:51:27 -07:00
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2026-04-19 21:06:28 -07:00
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objtool/klp: Rewrite symbol correlation algorithm
Rewrite the symbol correlation code, using a tiered list of
deterministic strategies in a loop. For duplicately named symbols, each
tier applies a filter with the goal of finding a 1:1 deterministic
correlation between the original and patched version of the symbol.
The three matching strategies are:
find_twin(): A funnel of progressively tighter filters. Candidates
with the same demangled name are counted at four levels: name, scope
(local-vs-global), file (strict file association), and checksum
(unchanged functions). The widest level that yields a 1:1 match wins,
narrower levels are only tried when the wider level is ambiguous.
find_twin_suffixed(): Uses already-correlated LLVM symbol pairs to map
.llvm.<hash> suffixes from orig to patched. Because all promoted
symbols from the same TU share the same hash, one correlated pair
seeds the mapping for the entire TU.
find_twin_positional(): Last resort, matches symbols by position among
same-named candidates, similar to livepatch sympos. Used for data
objects like __quirk variables where no deterministic filter can
distinguish the candidates.
Overall this works much better than the existing algorithm, particularly
with LTO kernels.
Acked-by: Song Liu <song@kernel.org>
Signed-off-by: Josh Poimboeuf <jpoimboe@kernel.org>
2026-04-09 20:51:27 -07:00
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2026-03-05 15:15:30 -08:00
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2026-04-19 21:06:28 -07:00
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2026-03-05 15:15:30 -08:00
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objtool/klp: Rewrite symbol correlation algorithm
Rewrite the symbol correlation code, using a tiered list of
deterministic strategies in a loop. For duplicately named symbols, each
tier applies a filter with the goal of finding a 1:1 deterministic
correlation between the original and patched version of the symbol.
The three matching strategies are:
find_twin(): A funnel of progressively tighter filters. Candidates
with the same demangled name are counted at four levels: name, scope
(local-vs-global), file (strict file association), and checksum
(unchanged functions). The widest level that yields a 1:1 match wins,
narrower levels are only tried when the wider level is ambiguous.
find_twin_suffixed(): Uses already-correlated LLVM symbol pairs to map
.llvm.<hash> suffixes from orig to patched. Because all promoted
symbols from the same TU share the same hash, one correlated pair
seeds the mapping for the entire TU.
find_twin_positional(): Last resort, matches symbols by position among
same-named candidates, similar to livepatch sympos. Used for data
objects like __quirk variables where no deterministic filter can
distinguish the candidates.
Overall this works much better than the existing algorithm, particularly
with LTO kernels.
Acked-by: Song Liu <song@kernel.org>
Signed-off-by: Josh Poimboeuf <jpoimboe@kernel.org>
2026-04-09 20:51:27 -07:00
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2026-03-05 15:15:31 -08:00
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objtool/klp: Rewrite symbol correlation algorithm
Rewrite the symbol correlation code, using a tiered list of
deterministic strategies in a loop. For duplicately named symbols, each
tier applies a filter with the goal of finding a 1:1 deterministic
correlation between the original and patched version of the symbol.
The three matching strategies are:
find_twin(): A funnel of progressively tighter filters. Candidates
with the same demangled name are counted at four levels: name, scope
(local-vs-global), file (strict file association), and checksum
(unchanged functions). The widest level that yields a 1:1 match wins,
narrower levels are only tried when the wider level is ambiguous.
find_twin_suffixed(): Uses already-correlated LLVM symbol pairs to map
.llvm.<hash> suffixes from orig to patched. Because all promoted
symbols from the same TU share the same hash, one correlated pair
seeds the mapping for the entire TU.
find_twin_positional(): Last resort, matches symbols by position among
same-named candidates, similar to livepatch sympos. Used for data
objects like __quirk variables where no deterministic filter can
distinguish the candidates.
Overall this works much better than the existing algorithm, particularly
with LTO kernels.
Acked-by: Song Liu <song@kernel.org>
Signed-off-by: Josh Poimboeuf <jpoimboe@kernel.org>
2026-04-09 20:51:27 -07:00
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2026-03-05 15:15:31 -08:00
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objtool/klp: Introduce klp diff subcommand for diffing object files
Add a new klp diff subcommand which performs a binary diff between two
object files and extracts changed functions into a new object which can
then be linked into a livepatch module.
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
(coming in a later patch) which injects #line directives into the
source .patch to preserve the original line numbers at compile time.
Note the end result of this subcommand is not yet functionally complete.
Livepatch needs some ELF magic which linkers don't like:
- Two relocation sections (.rela*, .klp.rela*) for the same text
section.
- Use of SHN_LIVEPATCH to mark livepatch symbols.
Unfortunately linkers tend to mangle such things. To work around that,
klp diff generates a linker-compliant intermediate binary which encodes
the relevant KLP section/reloc/symbol metadata.
After module linking, a klp post-link step (coming soon) will clean up
the mess and convert the linked .ko into a fully compliant livepatch
module.
Note this subcommand requires the diffed binaries to have been compiled
with -ffunction-sections and -fdata-sections, and processed with
'objtool --checksum'. Those constraints will be handled by a klp-build
script introduced in a later patch.
Without '-ffunction-sections -fdata-sections', reliable object diffing
would be infeasible due to toolchain limitations:
- For intra-file+intra-section references, the compiler might
occasionally generated hard-coded instruction offsets instead of
relocations.
- Section-symbol-based references can be ambiguous:
- Overlapping or zero-length symbols create ambiguity as to which
symbol is being referenced.
- A reference to the end of a symbol (e.g., checking array bounds)
can be misinterpreted as a reference to the next symbol, or vice
versa.
A potential future alternative to '-ffunction-sections -fdata-sections'
would be to introduce a toolchain option that forces symbol-based
(non-section) relocations.
Acked-by: Petr Mladek <pmladek@suse.com>
Tested-by: Joe Lawrence <joe.lawrence@redhat.com>
Signed-off-by: Josh Poimboeuf <jpoimboe@kernel.org>
2025-09-17 09:03:59 -07:00
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2026-04-19 21:06:28 -07:00
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|
objtool/klp: Introduce klp diff subcommand for diffing object files
Add a new klp diff subcommand which performs a binary diff between two
object files and extracts changed functions into a new object which can
then be linked into a livepatch module.
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
(coming in a later patch) which injects #line directives into the
source .patch to preserve the original line numbers at compile time.
Note the end result of this subcommand is not yet functionally complete.
Livepatch needs some ELF magic which linkers don't like:
- Two relocation sections (.rela*, .klp.rela*) for the same text
section.
- Use of SHN_LIVEPATCH to mark livepatch symbols.
Unfortunately linkers tend to mangle such things. To work around that,
klp diff generates a linker-compliant intermediate binary which encodes
the relevant KLP section/reloc/symbol metadata.
After module linking, a klp post-link step (coming soon) will clean up
the mess and convert the linked .ko into a fully compliant livepatch
module.
Note this subcommand requires the diffed binaries to have been compiled
with -ffunction-sections and -fdata-sections, and processed with
'objtool --checksum'. Those constraints will be handled by a klp-build
script introduced in a later patch.
Without '-ffunction-sections -fdata-sections', reliable object diffing
would be infeasible due to toolchain limitations:
- For intra-file+intra-section references, the compiler might
occasionally generated hard-coded instruction offsets instead of
relocations.
- Section-symbol-based references can be ambiguous:
- Overlapping or zero-length symbols create ambiguity as to which
symbol is being referenced.
- A reference to the end of a symbol (e.g., checking array bounds)
can be misinterpreted as a reference to the next symbol, or vice
versa.
A potential future alternative to '-ffunction-sections -fdata-sections'
would be to introduce a toolchain option that forces symbol-based
(non-section) relocations.
Acked-by: Petr Mladek <pmladek@suse.com>
Tested-by: Joe Lawrence <joe.lawrence@redhat.com>
Signed-off-by: Josh Poimboeuf <jpoimboe@kernel.org>
2025-09-17 09:03:59 -07:00
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2026-03-10 16:37:40 -04:00
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objtool/klp: Introduce klp diff subcommand for diffing object files
Add a new klp diff subcommand which performs a binary diff between two
object files and extracts changed functions into a new object which can
then be linked into a livepatch module.
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
(coming in a later patch) which injects #line directives into the
source .patch to preserve the original line numbers at compile time.
Note the end result of this subcommand is not yet functionally complete.
Livepatch needs some ELF magic which linkers don't like:
- Two relocation sections (.rela*, .klp.rela*) for the same text
section.
- Use of SHN_LIVEPATCH to mark livepatch symbols.
Unfortunately linkers tend to mangle such things. To work around that,
klp diff generates a linker-compliant intermediate binary which encodes
the relevant KLP section/reloc/symbol metadata.
After module linking, a klp post-link step (coming soon) will clean up
the mess and convert the linked .ko into a fully compliant livepatch
module.
Note this subcommand requires the diffed binaries to have been compiled
with -ffunction-sections and -fdata-sections, and processed with
'objtool --checksum'. Those constraints will be handled by a klp-build
script introduced in a later patch.
Without '-ffunction-sections -fdata-sections', reliable object diffing
would be infeasible due to toolchain limitations:
- For intra-file+intra-section references, the compiler might
occasionally generated hard-coded instruction offsets instead of
relocations.
- Section-symbol-based references can be ambiguous:
- Overlapping or zero-length symbols create ambiguity as to which
symbol is being referenced.
- A reference to the end of a symbol (e.g., checking array bounds)
can be misinterpreted as a reference to the next symbol, or vice
versa.
A potential future alternative to '-ffunction-sections -fdata-sections'
would be to introduce a toolchain option that forces symbol-based
(non-section) relocations.
Acked-by: Petr Mladek <pmladek@suse.com>
Tested-by: Joe Lawrence <joe.lawrence@redhat.com>
Signed-off-by: Josh Poimboeuf <jpoimboe@kernel.org>
2025-09-17 09:03:59 -07:00
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2026-04-09 18:35:01 -07:00
|
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|
objtool/klp: Introduce klp diff subcommand for diffing object files
Add a new klp diff subcommand which performs a binary diff between two
object files and extracts changed functions into a new object which can
then be linked into a livepatch module.
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
(coming in a later patch) which injects #line directives into the
source .patch to preserve the original line numbers at compile time.
Note the end result of this subcommand is not yet functionally complete.
Livepatch needs some ELF magic which linkers don't like:
- Two relocation sections (.rela*, .klp.rela*) for the same text
section.
- Use of SHN_LIVEPATCH to mark livepatch symbols.
Unfortunately linkers tend to mangle such things. To work around that,
klp diff generates a linker-compliant intermediate binary which encodes
the relevant KLP section/reloc/symbol metadata.
After module linking, a klp post-link step (coming soon) will clean up
the mess and convert the linked .ko into a fully compliant livepatch
module.
Note this subcommand requires the diffed binaries to have been compiled
with -ffunction-sections and -fdata-sections, and processed with
'objtool --checksum'. Those constraints will be handled by a klp-build
script introduced in a later patch.
Without '-ffunction-sections -fdata-sections', reliable object diffing
would be infeasible due to toolchain limitations:
- For intra-file+intra-section references, the compiler might
occasionally generated hard-coded instruction offsets instead of
relocations.
- Section-symbol-based references can be ambiguous:
- Overlapping or zero-length symbols create ambiguity as to which
symbol is being referenced.
- A reference to the end of a symbol (e.g., checking array bounds)
can be misinterpreted as a reference to the next symbol, or vice
versa.
A potential future alternative to '-ffunction-sections -fdata-sections'
would be to introduce a toolchain option that forces symbol-based
(non-section) relocations.
Acked-by: Petr Mladek <pmladek@suse.com>
Tested-by: Joe Lawrence <joe.lawrence@redhat.com>
Signed-off-by: Josh Poimboeuf <jpoimboe@kernel.org>
2025-09-17 09:03:59 -07:00
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2025-09-17 09:04:00 -07:00
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objtool/klp: Introduce klp diff subcommand for diffing object files
Add a new klp diff subcommand which performs a binary diff between two
object files and extracts changed functions into a new object which can
then be linked into a livepatch module.
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
(coming in a later patch) which injects #line directives into the
source .patch to preserve the original line numbers at compile time.
Note the end result of this subcommand is not yet functionally complete.
Livepatch needs some ELF magic which linkers don't like:
- Two relocation sections (.rela*, .klp.rela*) for the same text
section.
- Use of SHN_LIVEPATCH to mark livepatch symbols.
Unfortunately linkers tend to mangle such things. To work around that,
klp diff generates a linker-compliant intermediate binary which encodes
the relevant KLP section/reloc/symbol metadata.
After module linking, a klp post-link step (coming soon) will clean up
the mess and convert the linked .ko into a fully compliant livepatch
module.
Note this subcommand requires the diffed binaries to have been compiled
with -ffunction-sections and -fdata-sections, and processed with
'objtool --checksum'. Those constraints will be handled by a klp-build
script introduced in a later patch.
Without '-ffunction-sections -fdata-sections', reliable object diffing
would be infeasible due to toolchain limitations:
- For intra-file+intra-section references, the compiler might
occasionally generated hard-coded instruction offsets instead of
relocations.
- Section-symbol-based references can be ambiguous:
- Overlapping or zero-length symbols create ambiguity as to which
symbol is being referenced.
- A reference to the end of a symbol (e.g., checking array bounds)
can be misinterpreted as a reference to the next symbol, or vice
versa.
A potential future alternative to '-ffunction-sections -fdata-sections'
would be to introduce a toolchain option that forces symbol-based
(non-section) relocations.
Acked-by: Petr Mladek <pmladek@suse.com>
Tested-by: Joe Lawrence <joe.lawrence@redhat.com>
Signed-off-by: Josh Poimboeuf <jpoimboe@kernel.org>
2025-09-17 09:03:59 -07:00
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2026-04-20 22:58:37 -07:00
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2025-09-17 09:04:00 -07:00
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objtool/klp: Introduce klp diff subcommand for diffing object files
Add a new klp diff subcommand which performs a binary diff between two
object files and extracts changed functions into a new object which can
then be linked into a livepatch module.
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
(coming in a later patch) which injects #line directives into the
source .patch to preserve the original line numbers at compile time.
Note the end result of this subcommand is not yet functionally complete.
Livepatch needs some ELF magic which linkers don't like:
- Two relocation sections (.rela*, .klp.rela*) for the same text
section.
- Use of SHN_LIVEPATCH to mark livepatch symbols.
Unfortunately linkers tend to mangle such things. To work around that,
klp diff generates a linker-compliant intermediate binary which encodes
the relevant KLP section/reloc/symbol metadata.
After module linking, a klp post-link step (coming soon) will clean up
the mess and convert the linked .ko into a fully compliant livepatch
module.
Note this subcommand requires the diffed binaries to have been compiled
with -ffunction-sections and -fdata-sections, and processed with
'objtool --checksum'. Those constraints will be handled by a klp-build
script introduced in a later patch.
Without '-ffunction-sections -fdata-sections', reliable object diffing
would be infeasible due to toolchain limitations:
- For intra-file+intra-section references, the compiler might
occasionally generated hard-coded instruction offsets instead of
relocations.
- Section-symbol-based references can be ambiguous:
- Overlapping or zero-length symbols create ambiguity as to which
symbol is being referenced.
- A reference to the end of a symbol (e.g., checking array bounds)
can be misinterpreted as a reference to the next symbol, or vice
versa.
A potential future alternative to '-ffunction-sections -fdata-sections'
would be to introduce a toolchain option that forces symbol-based
(non-section) relocations.
Acked-by: Petr Mladek <pmladek@suse.com>
Tested-by: Joe Lawrence <joe.lawrence@redhat.com>
Signed-off-by: Josh Poimboeuf <jpoimboe@kernel.org>
2025-09-17 09:03:59 -07:00
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objtool/klp: Rewrite symbol correlation algorithm
Rewrite the symbol correlation code, using a tiered list of
deterministic strategies in a loop. For duplicately named symbols, each
tier applies a filter with the goal of finding a 1:1 deterministic
correlation between the original and patched version of the symbol.
The three matching strategies are:
find_twin(): A funnel of progressively tighter filters. Candidates
with the same demangled name are counted at four levels: name, scope
(local-vs-global), file (strict file association), and checksum
(unchanged functions). The widest level that yields a 1:1 match wins,
narrower levels are only tried when the wider level is ambiguous.
find_twin_suffixed(): Uses already-correlated LLVM symbol pairs to map
.llvm.<hash> suffixes from orig to patched. Because all promoted
symbols from the same TU share the same hash, one correlated pair
seeds the mapping for the entire TU.
find_twin_positional(): Last resort, matches symbols by position among
same-named candidates, similar to livepatch sympos. Used for data
objects like __quirk variables where no deterministic filter can
distinguish the candidates.
Overall this works much better than the existing algorithm, particularly
with LTO kernels.
Acked-by: Song Liu <song@kernel.org>
Signed-off-by: Josh Poimboeuf <jpoimboe@kernel.org>
2026-04-09 20:51:27 -07:00
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objtool/klp: Introduce klp diff subcommand for diffing object files
Add a new klp diff subcommand which performs a binary diff between two
object files and extracts changed functions into a new object which can
then be linked into a livepatch module.
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
(coming in a later patch) which injects #line directives into the
source .patch to preserve the original line numbers at compile time.
Note the end result of this subcommand is not yet functionally complete.
Livepatch needs some ELF magic which linkers don't like:
- Two relocation sections (.rela*, .klp.rela*) for the same text
section.
- Use of SHN_LIVEPATCH to mark livepatch symbols.
Unfortunately linkers tend to mangle such things. To work around that,
klp diff generates a linker-compliant intermediate binary which encodes
the relevant KLP section/reloc/symbol metadata.
After module linking, a klp post-link step (coming soon) will clean up
the mess and convert the linked .ko into a fully compliant livepatch
module.
Note this subcommand requires the diffed binaries to have been compiled
with -ffunction-sections and -fdata-sections, and processed with
'objtool --checksum'. Those constraints will be handled by a klp-build
script introduced in a later patch.
Without '-ffunction-sections -fdata-sections', reliable object diffing
would be infeasible due to toolchain limitations:
- For intra-file+intra-section references, the compiler might
occasionally generated hard-coded instruction offsets instead of
relocations.
- Section-symbol-based references can be ambiguous:
- Overlapping or zero-length symbols create ambiguity as to which
symbol is being referenced.
- A reference to the end of a symbol (e.g., checking array bounds)
can be misinterpreted as a reference to the next symbol, or vice
versa.
A potential future alternative to '-ffunction-sections -fdata-sections'
would be to introduce a toolchain option that forces symbol-based
(non-section) relocations.
Acked-by: Petr Mladek <pmladek@suse.com>
Tested-by: Joe Lawrence <joe.lawrence@redhat.com>
Signed-off-by: Josh Poimboeuf <jpoimboe@kernel.org>
2025-09-17 09:03:59 -07:00
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objtool/klp: Rewrite symbol correlation algorithm
Rewrite the symbol correlation code, using a tiered list of
deterministic strategies in a loop. For duplicately named symbols, each
tier applies a filter with the goal of finding a 1:1 deterministic
correlation between the original and patched version of the symbol.
The three matching strategies are:
find_twin(): A funnel of progressively tighter filters. Candidates
with the same demangled name are counted at four levels: name, scope
(local-vs-global), file (strict file association), and checksum
(unchanged functions). The widest level that yields a 1:1 match wins,
narrower levels are only tried when the wider level is ambiguous.
find_twin_suffixed(): Uses already-correlated LLVM symbol pairs to map
.llvm.<hash> suffixes from orig to patched. Because all promoted
symbols from the same TU share the same hash, one correlated pair
seeds the mapping for the entire TU.
find_twin_positional(): Last resort, matches symbols by position among
same-named candidates, similar to livepatch sympos. Used for data
objects like __quirk variables where no deterministic filter can
distinguish the candidates.
Overall this works much better than the existing algorithm, particularly
with LTO kernels.
Acked-by: Song Liu <song@kernel.org>
Signed-off-by: Josh Poimboeuf <jpoimboe@kernel.org>
2026-04-09 20:51:27 -07:00
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2026-04-19 21:06:28 -07:00
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objtool/klp: Introduce klp diff subcommand for diffing object files
Add a new klp diff subcommand which performs a binary diff between two
object files and extracts changed functions into a new object which can
then be linked into a livepatch module.
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
(coming in a later patch) which injects #line directives into the
source .patch to preserve the original line numbers at compile time.
Note the end result of this subcommand is not yet functionally complete.
Livepatch needs some ELF magic which linkers don't like:
- Two relocation sections (.rela*, .klp.rela*) for the same text
section.
- Use of SHN_LIVEPATCH to mark livepatch symbols.
Unfortunately linkers tend to mangle such things. To work around that,
klp diff generates a linker-compliant intermediate binary which encodes
the relevant KLP section/reloc/symbol metadata.
After module linking, a klp post-link step (coming soon) will clean up
the mess and convert the linked .ko into a fully compliant livepatch
module.
Note this subcommand requires the diffed binaries to have been compiled
with -ffunction-sections and -fdata-sections, and processed with
'objtool --checksum'. Those constraints will be handled by a klp-build
script introduced in a later patch.
Without '-ffunction-sections -fdata-sections', reliable object diffing
would be infeasible due to toolchain limitations:
- For intra-file+intra-section references, the compiler might
occasionally generated hard-coded instruction offsets instead of
relocations.
- Section-symbol-based references can be ambiguous:
- Overlapping or zero-length symbols create ambiguity as to which
symbol is being referenced.
- A reference to the end of a symbol (e.g., checking array bounds)
can be misinterpreted as a reference to the next symbol, or vice
versa.
A potential future alternative to '-ffunction-sections -fdata-sections'
would be to introduce a toolchain option that forces symbol-based
(non-section) relocations.
Acked-by: Petr Mladek <pmladek@suse.com>
Tested-by: Joe Lawrence <joe.lawrence@redhat.com>
Signed-off-by: Josh Poimboeuf <jpoimboe@kernel.org>
2025-09-17 09:03:59 -07:00
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objtool/klp: Rewrite symbol correlation algorithm
Rewrite the symbol correlation code, using a tiered list of
deterministic strategies in a loop. For duplicately named symbols, each
tier applies a filter with the goal of finding a 1:1 deterministic
correlation between the original and patched version of the symbol.
The three matching strategies are:
find_twin(): A funnel of progressively tighter filters. Candidates
with the same demangled name are counted at four levels: name, scope
(local-vs-global), file (strict file association), and checksum
(unchanged functions). The widest level that yields a 1:1 match wins,
narrower levels are only tried when the wider level is ambiguous.
find_twin_suffixed(): Uses already-correlated LLVM symbol pairs to map
.llvm.<hash> suffixes from orig to patched. Because all promoted
symbols from the same TU share the same hash, one correlated pair
seeds the mapping for the entire TU.
find_twin_positional(): Last resort, matches symbols by position among
same-named candidates, similar to livepatch sympos. Used for data
objects like __quirk variables where no deterministic filter can
distinguish the candidates.
Overall this works much better than the existing algorithm, particularly
with LTO kernels.
Acked-by: Song Liu <song@kernel.org>
Signed-off-by: Josh Poimboeuf <jpoimboe@kernel.org>
2026-04-09 20:51:27 -07:00
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objtool/klp: Introduce klp diff subcommand for diffing object files
Add a new klp diff subcommand which performs a binary diff between two
object files and extracts changed functions into a new object which can
then be linked into a livepatch module.
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
(coming in a later patch) which injects #line directives into the
source .patch to preserve the original line numbers at compile time.
Note the end result of this subcommand is not yet functionally complete.
Livepatch needs some ELF magic which linkers don't like:
- Two relocation sections (.rela*, .klp.rela*) for the same text
section.
- Use of SHN_LIVEPATCH to mark livepatch symbols.
Unfortunately linkers tend to mangle such things. To work around that,
klp diff generates a linker-compliant intermediate binary which encodes
the relevant KLP section/reloc/symbol metadata.
After module linking, a klp post-link step (coming soon) will clean up
the mess and convert the linked .ko into a fully compliant livepatch
module.
Note this subcommand requires the diffed binaries to have been compiled
with -ffunction-sections and -fdata-sections, and processed with
'objtool --checksum'. Those constraints will be handled by a klp-build
script introduced in a later patch.
Without '-ffunction-sections -fdata-sections', reliable object diffing
would be infeasible due to toolchain limitations:
- For intra-file+intra-section references, the compiler might
occasionally generated hard-coded instruction offsets instead of
relocations.
- Section-symbol-based references can be ambiguous:
- Overlapping or zero-length symbols create ambiguity as to which
symbol is being referenced.
- A reference to the end of a symbol (e.g., checking array bounds)
can be misinterpreted as a reference to the next symbol, or vice
versa.
A potential future alternative to '-ffunction-sections -fdata-sections'
would be to introduce a toolchain option that forces symbol-based
(non-section) relocations.
Acked-by: Petr Mladek <pmladek@suse.com>
Tested-by: Joe Lawrence <joe.lawrence@redhat.com>
Signed-off-by: Josh Poimboeuf <jpoimboe@kernel.org>
2025-09-17 09:03:59 -07:00
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objtool/klp: Rewrite symbol correlation algorithm
Rewrite the symbol correlation code, using a tiered list of
deterministic strategies in a loop. For duplicately named symbols, each
tier applies a filter with the goal of finding a 1:1 deterministic
correlation between the original and patched version of the symbol.
The three matching strategies are:
find_twin(): A funnel of progressively tighter filters. Candidates
with the same demangled name are counted at four levels: name, scope
(local-vs-global), file (strict file association), and checksum
(unchanged functions). The widest level that yields a 1:1 match wins,
narrower levels are only tried when the wider level is ambiguous.
find_twin_suffixed(): Uses already-correlated LLVM symbol pairs to map
.llvm.<hash> suffixes from orig to patched. Because all promoted
symbols from the same TU share the same hash, one correlated pair
seeds the mapping for the entire TU.
find_twin_positional(): Last resort, matches symbols by position among
same-named candidates, similar to livepatch sympos. Used for data
objects like __quirk variables where no deterministic filter can
distinguish the candidates.
Overall this works much better than the existing algorithm, particularly
with LTO kernels.
Acked-by: Song Liu <song@kernel.org>
Signed-off-by: Josh Poimboeuf <jpoimboe@kernel.org>
2026-04-09 20:51:27 -07:00
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objtool/klp: Introduce klp diff subcommand for diffing object files
Add a new klp diff subcommand which performs a binary diff between two
object files and extracts changed functions into a new object which can
then be linked into a livepatch module.
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
(coming in a later patch) which injects #line directives into the
source .patch to preserve the original line numbers at compile time.
Note the end result of this subcommand is not yet functionally complete.
Livepatch needs some ELF magic which linkers don't like:
- Two relocation sections (.rela*, .klp.rela*) for the same text
section.
- Use of SHN_LIVEPATCH to mark livepatch symbols.
Unfortunately linkers tend to mangle such things. To work around that,
klp diff generates a linker-compliant intermediate binary which encodes
the relevant KLP section/reloc/symbol metadata.
After module linking, a klp post-link step (coming soon) will clean up
the mess and convert the linked .ko into a fully compliant livepatch
module.
Note this subcommand requires the diffed binaries to have been compiled
with -ffunction-sections and -fdata-sections, and processed with
'objtool --checksum'. Those constraints will be handled by a klp-build
script introduced in a later patch.
Without '-ffunction-sections -fdata-sections', reliable object diffing
would be infeasible due to toolchain limitations:
- For intra-file+intra-section references, the compiler might
occasionally generated hard-coded instruction offsets instead of
relocations.
- Section-symbol-based references can be ambiguous:
- Overlapping or zero-length symbols create ambiguity as to which
symbol is being referenced.
- A reference to the end of a symbol (e.g., checking array bounds)
can be misinterpreted as a reference to the next symbol, or vice
versa.
A potential future alternative to '-ffunction-sections -fdata-sections'
would be to introduce a toolchain option that forces symbol-based
(non-section) relocations.
Acked-by: Petr Mladek <pmladek@suse.com>
Tested-by: Joe Lawrence <joe.lawrence@redhat.com>
Signed-off-by: Josh Poimboeuf <jpoimboe@kernel.org>
2025-09-17 09:03:59 -07:00
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2026-04-19 21:06:28 -07:00
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objtool/klp: Introduce klp diff subcommand for diffing object files
Add a new klp diff subcommand which performs a binary diff between two
object files and extracts changed functions into a new object which can
then be linked into a livepatch module.
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
(coming in a later patch) which injects #line directives into the
source .patch to preserve the original line numbers at compile time.
Note the end result of this subcommand is not yet functionally complete.
Livepatch needs some ELF magic which linkers don't like:
- Two relocation sections (.rela*, .klp.rela*) for the same text
section.
- Use of SHN_LIVEPATCH to mark livepatch symbols.
Unfortunately linkers tend to mangle such things. To work around that,
klp diff generates a linker-compliant intermediate binary which encodes
the relevant KLP section/reloc/symbol metadata.
After module linking, a klp post-link step (coming soon) will clean up
the mess and convert the linked .ko into a fully compliant livepatch
module.
Note this subcommand requires the diffed binaries to have been compiled
with -ffunction-sections and -fdata-sections, and processed with
'objtool --checksum'. Those constraints will be handled by a klp-build
script introduced in a later patch.
Without '-ffunction-sections -fdata-sections', reliable object diffing
would be infeasible due to toolchain limitations:
- For intra-file+intra-section references, the compiler might
occasionally generated hard-coded instruction offsets instead of
relocations.
- Section-symbol-based references can be ambiguous:
- Overlapping or zero-length symbols create ambiguity as to which
symbol is being referenced.
- A reference to the end of a symbol (e.g., checking array bounds)
can be misinterpreted as a reference to the next symbol, or vice
versa.
A potential future alternative to '-ffunction-sections -fdata-sections'
would be to introduce a toolchain option that forces symbol-based
(non-section) relocations.
Acked-by: Petr Mladek <pmladek@suse.com>
Tested-by: Joe Lawrence <joe.lawrence@redhat.com>
Signed-off-by: Josh Poimboeuf <jpoimboe@kernel.org>
2025-09-17 09:03:59 -07:00
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objtool/klp: Rewrite symbol correlation algorithm
Rewrite the symbol correlation code, using a tiered list of
deterministic strategies in a loop. For duplicately named symbols, each
tier applies a filter with the goal of finding a 1:1 deterministic
correlation between the original and patched version of the symbol.
The three matching strategies are:
find_twin(): A funnel of progressively tighter filters. Candidates
with the same demangled name are counted at four levels: name, scope
(local-vs-global), file (strict file association), and checksum
(unchanged functions). The widest level that yields a 1:1 match wins,
narrower levels are only tried when the wider level is ambiguous.
find_twin_suffixed(): Uses already-correlated LLVM symbol pairs to map
.llvm.<hash> suffixes from orig to patched. Because all promoted
symbols from the same TU share the same hash, one correlated pair
seeds the mapping for the entire TU.
find_twin_positional(): Last resort, matches symbols by position among
same-named candidates, similar to livepatch sympos. Used for data
objects like __quirk variables where no deterministic filter can
distinguish the candidates.
Overall this works much better than the existing algorithm, particularly
with LTO kernels.
Acked-by: Song Liu <song@kernel.org>
Signed-off-by: Josh Poimboeuf <jpoimboe@kernel.org>
2026-04-09 20:51:27 -07:00
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objtool/klp: Introduce klp diff subcommand for diffing object files
Add a new klp diff subcommand which performs a binary diff between two
object files and extracts changed functions into a new object which can
then be linked into a livepatch module.
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
(coming in a later patch) which injects #line directives into the
source .patch to preserve the original line numbers at compile time.
Note the end result of this subcommand is not yet functionally complete.
Livepatch needs some ELF magic which linkers don't like:
- Two relocation sections (.rela*, .klp.rela*) for the same text
section.
- Use of SHN_LIVEPATCH to mark livepatch symbols.
Unfortunately linkers tend to mangle such things. To work around that,
klp diff generates a linker-compliant intermediate binary which encodes
the relevant KLP section/reloc/symbol metadata.
After module linking, a klp post-link step (coming soon) will clean up
the mess and convert the linked .ko into a fully compliant livepatch
module.
Note this subcommand requires the diffed binaries to have been compiled
with -ffunction-sections and -fdata-sections, and processed with
'objtool --checksum'. Those constraints will be handled by a klp-build
script introduced in a later patch.
Without '-ffunction-sections -fdata-sections', reliable object diffing
would be infeasible due to toolchain limitations:
- For intra-file+intra-section references, the compiler might
occasionally generated hard-coded instruction offsets instead of
relocations.
- Section-symbol-based references can be ambiguous:
- Overlapping or zero-length symbols create ambiguity as to which
symbol is being referenced.
- A reference to the end of a symbol (e.g., checking array bounds)
can be misinterpreted as a reference to the next symbol, or vice
versa.
A potential future alternative to '-ffunction-sections -fdata-sections'
would be to introduce a toolchain option that forces symbol-based
(non-section) relocations.
Acked-by: Petr Mladek <pmladek@suse.com>
Tested-by: Joe Lawrence <joe.lawrence@redhat.com>
Signed-off-by: Josh Poimboeuf <jpoimboe@kernel.org>
2025-09-17 09:03:59 -07:00
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2026-08-07 14:37:51 -07:00
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objtool/klp: Introduce klp diff subcommand for diffing object files
Add a new klp diff subcommand which performs a binary diff between two
object files and extracts changed functions into a new object which can
then be linked into a livepatch module.
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
(coming in a later patch) which injects #line directives into the
source .patch to preserve the original line numbers at compile time.
Note the end result of this subcommand is not yet functionally complete.
Livepatch needs some ELF magic which linkers don't like:
- Two relocation sections (.rela*, .klp.rela*) for the same text
section.
- Use of SHN_LIVEPATCH to mark livepatch symbols.
Unfortunately linkers tend to mangle such things. To work around that,
klp diff generates a linker-compliant intermediate binary which encodes
the relevant KLP section/reloc/symbol metadata.
After module linking, a klp post-link step (coming soon) will clean up
the mess and convert the linked .ko into a fully compliant livepatch
module.
Note this subcommand requires the diffed binaries to have been compiled
with -ffunction-sections and -fdata-sections, and processed with
'objtool --checksum'. Those constraints will be handled by a klp-build
script introduced in a later patch.
Without '-ffunction-sections -fdata-sections', reliable object diffing
would be infeasible due to toolchain limitations:
- For intra-file+intra-section references, the compiler might
occasionally generated hard-coded instruction offsets instead of
relocations.
- Section-symbol-based references can be ambiguous:
- Overlapping or zero-length symbols create ambiguity as to which
symbol is being referenced.
- A reference to the end of a symbol (e.g., checking array bounds)
can be misinterpreted as a reference to the next symbol, or vice
versa.
A potential future alternative to '-ffunction-sections -fdata-sections'
would be to introduce a toolchain option that forces symbol-based
(non-section) relocations.
Acked-by: Petr Mladek <pmladek@suse.com>
Tested-by: Joe Lawrence <joe.lawrence@redhat.com>
Signed-off-by: Josh Poimboeuf <jpoimboe@kernel.org>
2025-09-17 09:03:59 -07:00
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2026-08-02 20:24:24 -07:00
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objtool/klp: Introduce klp diff subcommand for diffing object files
Add a new klp diff subcommand which performs a binary diff between two
object files and extracts changed functions into a new object which can
then be linked into a livepatch module.
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
(coming in a later patch) which injects #line directives into the
source .patch to preserve the original line numbers at compile time.
Note the end result of this subcommand is not yet functionally complete.
Livepatch needs some ELF magic which linkers don't like:
- Two relocation sections (.rela*, .klp.rela*) for the same text
section.
- Use of SHN_LIVEPATCH to mark livepatch symbols.
Unfortunately linkers tend to mangle such things. To work around that,
klp diff generates a linker-compliant intermediate binary which encodes
the relevant KLP section/reloc/symbol metadata.
After module linking, a klp post-link step (coming soon) will clean up
the mess and convert the linked .ko into a fully compliant livepatch
module.
Note this subcommand requires the diffed binaries to have been compiled
with -ffunction-sections and -fdata-sections, and processed with
'objtool --checksum'. Those constraints will be handled by a klp-build
script introduced in a later patch.
Without '-ffunction-sections -fdata-sections', reliable object diffing
would be infeasible due to toolchain limitations:
- For intra-file+intra-section references, the compiler might
occasionally generated hard-coded instruction offsets instead of
relocations.
- Section-symbol-based references can be ambiguous:
- Overlapping or zero-length symbols create ambiguity as to which
symbol is being referenced.
- A reference to the end of a symbol (e.g., checking array bounds)
can be misinterpreted as a reference to the next symbol, or vice
versa.
A potential future alternative to '-ffunction-sections -fdata-sections'
would be to introduce a toolchain option that forces symbol-based
(non-section) relocations.
Acked-by: Petr Mladek <pmladek@suse.com>
Tested-by: Joe Lawrence <joe.lawrence@redhat.com>
Signed-off-by: Josh Poimboeuf <jpoimboe@kernel.org>
2025-09-17 09:03:59 -07:00
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2026-08-02 20:24:24 -07:00
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objtool/klp: Introduce klp diff subcommand for diffing object files
Add a new klp diff subcommand which performs a binary diff between two
object files and extracts changed functions into a new object which can
then be linked into a livepatch module.
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
(coming in a later patch) which injects #line directives into the
source .patch to preserve the original line numbers at compile time.
Note the end result of this subcommand is not yet functionally complete.
Livepatch needs some ELF magic which linkers don't like:
- Two relocation sections (.rela*, .klp.rela*) for the same text
section.
- Use of SHN_LIVEPATCH to mark livepatch symbols.
Unfortunately linkers tend to mangle such things. To work around that,
klp diff generates a linker-compliant intermediate binary which encodes
the relevant KLP section/reloc/symbol metadata.
After module linking, a klp post-link step (coming soon) will clean up
the mess and convert the linked .ko into a fully compliant livepatch
module.
Note this subcommand requires the diffed binaries to have been compiled
with -ffunction-sections and -fdata-sections, and processed with
'objtool --checksum'. Those constraints will be handled by a klp-build
script introduced in a later patch.
Without '-ffunction-sections -fdata-sections', reliable object diffing
would be infeasible due to toolchain limitations:
- For intra-file+intra-section references, the compiler might
occasionally generated hard-coded instruction offsets instead of
relocations.
- Section-symbol-based references can be ambiguous:
- Overlapping or zero-length symbols create ambiguity as to which
symbol is being referenced.
- A reference to the end of a symbol (e.g., checking array bounds)
can be misinterpreted as a reference to the next symbol, or vice
versa.
A potential future alternative to '-ffunction-sections -fdata-sections'
would be to introduce a toolchain option that forces symbol-based
(non-section) relocations.
Acked-by: Petr Mladek <pmladek@suse.com>
Tested-by: Joe Lawrence <joe.lawrence@redhat.com>
Signed-off-by: Josh Poimboeuf <jpoimboe@kernel.org>
2025-09-17 09:03:59 -07:00
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2026-04-19 21:06:28 -07:00
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objtool/klp: Introduce klp diff subcommand for diffing object files
Add a new klp diff subcommand which performs a binary diff between two
object files and extracts changed functions into a new object which can
then be linked into a livepatch module.
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
(coming in a later patch) which injects #line directives into the
source .patch to preserve the original line numbers at compile time.
Note the end result of this subcommand is not yet functionally complete.
Livepatch needs some ELF magic which linkers don't like:
- Two relocation sections (.rela*, .klp.rela*) for the same text
section.
- Use of SHN_LIVEPATCH to mark livepatch symbols.
Unfortunately linkers tend to mangle such things. To work around that,
klp diff generates a linker-compliant intermediate binary which encodes
the relevant KLP section/reloc/symbol metadata.
After module linking, a klp post-link step (coming soon) will clean up
the mess and convert the linked .ko into a fully compliant livepatch
module.
Note this subcommand requires the diffed binaries to have been compiled
with -ffunction-sections and -fdata-sections, and processed with
'objtool --checksum'. Those constraints will be handled by a klp-build
script introduced in a later patch.
Without '-ffunction-sections -fdata-sections', reliable object diffing
would be infeasible due to toolchain limitations:
- For intra-file+intra-section references, the compiler might
occasionally generated hard-coded instruction offsets instead of
relocations.
- Section-symbol-based references can be ambiguous:
- Overlapping or zero-length symbols create ambiguity as to which
symbol is being referenced.
- A reference to the end of a symbol (e.g., checking array bounds)
can be misinterpreted as a reference to the next symbol, or vice
versa.
A potential future alternative to '-ffunction-sections -fdata-sections'
would be to introduce a toolchain option that forces symbol-based
(non-section) relocations.
Acked-by: Petr Mladek <pmladek@suse.com>
Tested-by: Joe Lawrence <joe.lawrence@redhat.com>
Signed-off-by: Josh Poimboeuf <jpoimboe@kernel.org>
2025-09-17 09:03:59 -07:00
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2026-08-07 14:37:53 -07:00
|
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|
objtool/klp: Introduce klp diff subcommand for diffing object files
Add a new klp diff subcommand which performs a binary diff between two
object files and extracts changed functions into a new object which can
then be linked into a livepatch module.
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
(coming in a later patch) which injects #line directives into the
source .patch to preserve the original line numbers at compile time.
Note the end result of this subcommand is not yet functionally complete.
Livepatch needs some ELF magic which linkers don't like:
- Two relocation sections (.rela*, .klp.rela*) for the same text
section.
- Use of SHN_LIVEPATCH to mark livepatch symbols.
Unfortunately linkers tend to mangle such things. To work around that,
klp diff generates a linker-compliant intermediate binary which encodes
the relevant KLP section/reloc/symbol metadata.
After module linking, a klp post-link step (coming soon) will clean up
the mess and convert the linked .ko into a fully compliant livepatch
module.
Note this subcommand requires the diffed binaries to have been compiled
with -ffunction-sections and -fdata-sections, and processed with
'objtool --checksum'. Those constraints will be handled by a klp-build
script introduced in a later patch.
Without '-ffunction-sections -fdata-sections', reliable object diffing
would be infeasible due to toolchain limitations:
- For intra-file+intra-section references, the compiler might
occasionally generated hard-coded instruction offsets instead of
relocations.
- Section-symbol-based references can be ambiguous:
- Overlapping or zero-length symbols create ambiguity as to which
symbol is being referenced.
- A reference to the end of a symbol (e.g., checking array bounds)
can be misinterpreted as a reference to the next symbol, or vice
versa.
A potential future alternative to '-ffunction-sections -fdata-sections'
would be to introduce a toolchain option that forces symbol-based
(non-section) relocations.
Acked-by: Petr Mladek <pmladek@suse.com>
Tested-by: Joe Lawrence <joe.lawrence@redhat.com>
Signed-off-by: Josh Poimboeuf <jpoimboe@kernel.org>
2025-09-17 09:03:59 -07:00
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2026-08-07 14:37:53 -07:00
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objtool/klp: Introduce klp diff subcommand for diffing object files
Add a new klp diff subcommand which performs a binary diff between two
object files and extracts changed functions into a new object which can
then be linked into a livepatch module.
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
(coming in a later patch) which injects #line directives into the
source .patch to preserve the original line numbers at compile time.
Note the end result of this subcommand is not yet functionally complete.
Livepatch needs some ELF magic which linkers don't like:
- Two relocation sections (.rela*, .klp.rela*) for the same text
section.
- Use of SHN_LIVEPATCH to mark livepatch symbols.
Unfortunately linkers tend to mangle such things. To work around that,
klp diff generates a linker-compliant intermediate binary which encodes
the relevant KLP section/reloc/symbol metadata.
After module linking, a klp post-link step (coming soon) will clean up
the mess and convert the linked .ko into a fully compliant livepatch
module.
Note this subcommand requires the diffed binaries to have been compiled
with -ffunction-sections and -fdata-sections, and processed with
'objtool --checksum'. Those constraints will be handled by a klp-build
script introduced in a later patch.
Without '-ffunction-sections -fdata-sections', reliable object diffing
would be infeasible due to toolchain limitations:
- For intra-file+intra-section references, the compiler might
occasionally generated hard-coded instruction offsets instead of
relocations.
- Section-symbol-based references can be ambiguous:
- Overlapping or zero-length symbols create ambiguity as to which
symbol is being referenced.
- A reference to the end of a symbol (e.g., checking array bounds)
can be misinterpreted as a reference to the next symbol, or vice
versa.
A potential future alternative to '-ffunction-sections -fdata-sections'
would be to introduce a toolchain option that forces symbol-based
(non-section) relocations.
Acked-by: Petr Mladek <pmladek@suse.com>
Tested-by: Joe Lawrence <joe.lawrence@redhat.com>
Signed-off-by: Josh Poimboeuf <jpoimboe@kernel.org>
2025-09-17 09:03:59 -07:00
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2026-04-29 20:07:28 -07:00
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|
objtool/klp: Introduce klp diff subcommand for diffing object files
Add a new klp diff subcommand which performs a binary diff between two
object files and extracts changed functions into a new object which can
then be linked into a livepatch module.
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
(coming in a later patch) which injects #line directives into the
source .patch to preserve the original line numbers at compile time.
Note the end result of this subcommand is not yet functionally complete.
Livepatch needs some ELF magic which linkers don't like:
- Two relocation sections (.rela*, .klp.rela*) for the same text
section.
- Use of SHN_LIVEPATCH to mark livepatch symbols.
Unfortunately linkers tend to mangle such things. To work around that,
klp diff generates a linker-compliant intermediate binary which encodes
the relevant KLP section/reloc/symbol metadata.
After module linking, a klp post-link step (coming soon) will clean up
the mess and convert the linked .ko into a fully compliant livepatch
module.
Note this subcommand requires the diffed binaries to have been compiled
with -ffunction-sections and -fdata-sections, and processed with
'objtool --checksum'. Those constraints will be handled by a klp-build
script introduced in a later patch.
Without '-ffunction-sections -fdata-sections', reliable object diffing
would be infeasible due to toolchain limitations:
- For intra-file+intra-section references, the compiler might
occasionally generated hard-coded instruction offsets instead of
relocations.
- Section-symbol-based references can be ambiguous:
- Overlapping or zero-length symbols create ambiguity as to which
symbol is being referenced.
- A reference to the end of a symbol (e.g., checking array bounds)
can be misinterpreted as a reference to the next symbol, or vice
versa.
A potential future alternative to '-ffunction-sections -fdata-sections'
would be to introduce a toolchain option that forces symbol-based
(non-section) relocations.
Acked-by: Petr Mladek <pmladek@suse.com>
Tested-by: Joe Lawrence <joe.lawrence@redhat.com>
Signed-off-by: Josh Poimboeuf <jpoimboe@kernel.org>
2025-09-17 09:03:59 -07:00
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2026-04-29 20:07:28 -07:00
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objtool/klp: Introduce klp diff subcommand for diffing object files
Add a new klp diff subcommand which performs a binary diff between two
object files and extracts changed functions into a new object which can
then be linked into a livepatch module.
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
(coming in a later patch) which injects #line directives into the
source .patch to preserve the original line numbers at compile time.
Note the end result of this subcommand is not yet functionally complete.
Livepatch needs some ELF magic which linkers don't like:
- Two relocation sections (.rela*, .klp.rela*) for the same text
section.
- Use of SHN_LIVEPATCH to mark livepatch symbols.
Unfortunately linkers tend to mangle such things. To work around that,
klp diff generates a linker-compliant intermediate binary which encodes
the relevant KLP section/reloc/symbol metadata.
After module linking, a klp post-link step (coming soon) will clean up
the mess and convert the linked .ko into a fully compliant livepatch
module.
Note this subcommand requires the diffed binaries to have been compiled
with -ffunction-sections and -fdata-sections, and processed with
'objtool --checksum'. Those constraints will be handled by a klp-build
script introduced in a later patch.
Without '-ffunction-sections -fdata-sections', reliable object diffing
would be infeasible due to toolchain limitations:
- For intra-file+intra-section references, the compiler might
occasionally generated hard-coded instruction offsets instead of
relocations.
- Section-symbol-based references can be ambiguous:
- Overlapping or zero-length symbols create ambiguity as to which
symbol is being referenced.
- A reference to the end of a symbol (e.g., checking array bounds)
can be misinterpreted as a reference to the next symbol, or vice
versa.
A potential future alternative to '-ffunction-sections -fdata-sections'
would be to introduce a toolchain option that forces symbol-based
(non-section) relocations.
Acked-by: Petr Mladek <pmladek@suse.com>
Tested-by: Joe Lawrence <joe.lawrence@redhat.com>
Signed-off-by: Josh Poimboeuf <jpoimboe@kernel.org>
2025-09-17 09:03:59 -07:00
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2026-04-29 21:54:41 -07:00
|
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|
objtool/klp: Introduce klp diff subcommand for diffing object files
Add a new klp diff subcommand which performs a binary diff between two
object files and extracts changed functions into a new object which can
then be linked into a livepatch module.
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
(coming in a later patch) which injects #line directives into the
source .patch to preserve the original line numbers at compile time.
Note the end result of this subcommand is not yet functionally complete.
Livepatch needs some ELF magic which linkers don't like:
- Two relocation sections (.rela*, .klp.rela*) for the same text
section.
- Use of SHN_LIVEPATCH to mark livepatch symbols.
Unfortunately linkers tend to mangle such things. To work around that,
klp diff generates a linker-compliant intermediate binary which encodes
the relevant KLP section/reloc/symbol metadata.
After module linking, a klp post-link step (coming soon) will clean up
the mess and convert the linked .ko into a fully compliant livepatch
module.
Note this subcommand requires the diffed binaries to have been compiled
with -ffunction-sections and -fdata-sections, and processed with
'objtool --checksum'. Those constraints will be handled by a klp-build
script introduced in a later patch.
Without '-ffunction-sections -fdata-sections', reliable object diffing
would be infeasible due to toolchain limitations:
- For intra-file+intra-section references, the compiler might
occasionally generated hard-coded instruction offsets instead of
relocations.
- Section-symbol-based references can be ambiguous:
- Overlapping or zero-length symbols create ambiguity as to which
symbol is being referenced.
- A reference to the end of a symbol (e.g., checking array bounds)
can be misinterpreted as a reference to the next symbol, or vice
versa.
A potential future alternative to '-ffunction-sections -fdata-sections'
would be to introduce a toolchain option that forces symbol-based
(non-section) relocations.
Acked-by: Petr Mladek <pmladek@suse.com>
Tested-by: Joe Lawrence <joe.lawrence@redhat.com>
Signed-off-by: Josh Poimboeuf <jpoimboe@kernel.org>
2025-09-17 09:03:59 -07:00
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2026-04-29 20:07:28 -07:00
|
|
|
|
objtool/klp: Introduce klp diff subcommand for diffing object files
Add a new klp diff subcommand which performs a binary diff between two
object files and extracts changed functions into a new object which can
then be linked into a livepatch module.
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
(coming in a later patch) which injects #line directives into the
source .patch to preserve the original line numbers at compile time.
Note the end result of this subcommand is not yet functionally complete.
Livepatch needs some ELF magic which linkers don't like:
- Two relocation sections (.rela*, .klp.rela*) for the same text
section.
- Use of SHN_LIVEPATCH to mark livepatch symbols.
Unfortunately linkers tend to mangle such things. To work around that,
klp diff generates a linker-compliant intermediate binary which encodes
the relevant KLP section/reloc/symbol metadata.
After module linking, a klp post-link step (coming soon) will clean up
the mess and convert the linked .ko into a fully compliant livepatch
module.
Note this subcommand requires the diffed binaries to have been compiled
with -ffunction-sections and -fdata-sections, and processed with
'objtool --checksum'. Those constraints will be handled by a klp-build
script introduced in a later patch.
Without '-ffunction-sections -fdata-sections', reliable object diffing
would be infeasible due to toolchain limitations:
- For intra-file+intra-section references, the compiler might
occasionally generated hard-coded instruction offsets instead of
relocations.
- Section-symbol-based references can be ambiguous:
- Overlapping or zero-length symbols create ambiguity as to which
symbol is being referenced.
- A reference to the end of a symbol (e.g., checking array bounds)
can be misinterpreted as a reference to the next symbol, or vice
versa.
A potential future alternative to '-ffunction-sections -fdata-sections'
would be to introduce a toolchain option that forces symbol-based
(non-section) relocations.
Acked-by: Petr Mladek <pmladek@suse.com>
Tested-by: Joe Lawrence <joe.lawrence@redhat.com>
Signed-off-by: Josh Poimboeuf <jpoimboe@kernel.org>
2025-09-17 09:03:59 -07:00
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2026-04-29 20:07:28 -07:00
|
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|
objtool/klp: Introduce klp diff subcommand for diffing object files
Add a new klp diff subcommand which performs a binary diff between two
object files and extracts changed functions into a new object which can
then be linked into a livepatch module.
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
(coming in a later patch) which injects #line directives into the
source .patch to preserve the original line numbers at compile time.
Note the end result of this subcommand is not yet functionally complete.
Livepatch needs some ELF magic which linkers don't like:
- Two relocation sections (.rela*, .klp.rela*) for the same text
section.
- Use of SHN_LIVEPATCH to mark livepatch symbols.
Unfortunately linkers tend to mangle such things. To work around that,
klp diff generates a linker-compliant intermediate binary which encodes
the relevant KLP section/reloc/symbol metadata.
After module linking, a klp post-link step (coming soon) will clean up
the mess and convert the linked .ko into a fully compliant livepatch
module.
Note this subcommand requires the diffed binaries to have been compiled
with -ffunction-sections and -fdata-sections, and processed with
'objtool --checksum'. Those constraints will be handled by a klp-build
script introduced in a later patch.
Without '-ffunction-sections -fdata-sections', reliable object diffing
would be infeasible due to toolchain limitations:
- For intra-file+intra-section references, the compiler might
occasionally generated hard-coded instruction offsets instead of
relocations.
- Section-symbol-based references can be ambiguous:
- Overlapping or zero-length symbols create ambiguity as to which
symbol is being referenced.
- A reference to the end of a symbol (e.g., checking array bounds)
can be misinterpreted as a reference to the next symbol, or vice
versa.
A potential future alternative to '-ffunction-sections -fdata-sections'
would be to introduce a toolchain option that forces symbol-based
(non-section) relocations.
Acked-by: Petr Mladek <pmladek@suse.com>
Tested-by: Joe Lawrence <joe.lawrence@redhat.com>
Signed-off-by: Josh Poimboeuf <jpoimboe@kernel.org>
2025-09-17 09:03:59 -07:00
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2026-04-28 14:34:23 -07:00
|
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|
|
objtool/klp: Introduce klp diff subcommand for diffing object files
Add a new klp diff subcommand which performs a binary diff between two
object files and extracts changed functions into a new object which can
then be linked into a livepatch module.
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
(coming in a later patch) which injects #line directives into the
source .patch to preserve the original line numbers at compile time.
Note the end result of this subcommand is not yet functionally complete.
Livepatch needs some ELF magic which linkers don't like:
- Two relocation sections (.rela*, .klp.rela*) for the same text
section.
- Use of SHN_LIVEPATCH to mark livepatch symbols.
Unfortunately linkers tend to mangle such things. To work around that,
klp diff generates a linker-compliant intermediate binary which encodes
the relevant KLP section/reloc/symbol metadata.
After module linking, a klp post-link step (coming soon) will clean up
the mess and convert the linked .ko into a fully compliant livepatch
module.
Note this subcommand requires the diffed binaries to have been compiled
with -ffunction-sections and -fdata-sections, and processed with
'objtool --checksum'. Those constraints will be handled by a klp-build
script introduced in a later patch.
Without '-ffunction-sections -fdata-sections', reliable object diffing
would be infeasible due to toolchain limitations:
- For intra-file+intra-section references, the compiler might
occasionally generated hard-coded instruction offsets instead of
relocations.
- Section-symbol-based references can be ambiguous:
- Overlapping or zero-length symbols create ambiguity as to which
symbol is being referenced.
- A reference to the end of a symbol (e.g., checking array bounds)
can be misinterpreted as a reference to the next symbol, or vice
versa.
A potential future alternative to '-ffunction-sections -fdata-sections'
would be to introduce a toolchain option that forces symbol-based
(non-section) relocations.
Acked-by: Petr Mladek <pmladek@suse.com>
Tested-by: Joe Lawrence <joe.lawrence@redhat.com>
Signed-off-by: Josh Poimboeuf <jpoimboe@kernel.org>
2025-09-17 09:03:59 -07:00
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2026-04-09 18:34:50 -07:00
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2026-04-28 14:34:23 -07:00
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objtool/klp: Introduce klp diff subcommand for diffing object files
Add a new klp diff subcommand which performs a binary diff between two
object files and extracts changed functions into a new object which can
then be linked into a livepatch module.
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
(coming in a later patch) which injects #line directives into the
source .patch to preserve the original line numbers at compile time.
Note the end result of this subcommand is not yet functionally complete.
Livepatch needs some ELF magic which linkers don't like:
- Two relocation sections (.rela*, .klp.rela*) for the same text
section.
- Use of SHN_LIVEPATCH to mark livepatch symbols.
Unfortunately linkers tend to mangle such things. To work around that,
klp diff generates a linker-compliant intermediate binary which encodes
the relevant KLP section/reloc/symbol metadata.
After module linking, a klp post-link step (coming soon) will clean up
the mess and convert the linked .ko into a fully compliant livepatch
module.
Note this subcommand requires the diffed binaries to have been compiled
with -ffunction-sections and -fdata-sections, and processed with
'objtool --checksum'. Those constraints will be handled by a klp-build
script introduced in a later patch.
Without '-ffunction-sections -fdata-sections', reliable object diffing
would be infeasible due to toolchain limitations:
- For intra-file+intra-section references, the compiler might
occasionally generated hard-coded instruction offsets instead of
relocations.
- Section-symbol-based references can be ambiguous:
- Overlapping or zero-length symbols create ambiguity as to which
symbol is being referenced.
- A reference to the end of a symbol (e.g., checking array bounds)
can be misinterpreted as a reference to the next symbol, or vice
versa.
A potential future alternative to '-ffunction-sections -fdata-sections'
would be to introduce a toolchain option that forces symbol-based
(non-section) relocations.
Acked-by: Petr Mladek <pmladek@suse.com>
Tested-by: Joe Lawrence <joe.lawrence@redhat.com>
Signed-off-by: Josh Poimboeuf <jpoimboe@kernel.org>
2025-09-17 09:03:59 -07:00
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2026-04-29 20:07:28 -07:00
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2026-04-09 20:50:35 -07:00
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2026-04-29 20:07:28 -07:00
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2026-04-09 20:50:35 -07:00
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2026-04-29 20:07:28 -07:00
|
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|
objtool/klp: Introduce klp diff subcommand for diffing object files
Add a new klp diff subcommand which performs a binary diff between two
object files and extracts changed functions into a new object which can
then be linked into a livepatch module.
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
(coming in a later patch) which injects #line directives into the
source .patch to preserve the original line numbers at compile time.
Note the end result of this subcommand is not yet functionally complete.
Livepatch needs some ELF magic which linkers don't like:
- Two relocation sections (.rela*, .klp.rela*) for the same text
section.
- Use of SHN_LIVEPATCH to mark livepatch symbols.
Unfortunately linkers tend to mangle such things. To work around that,
klp diff generates a linker-compliant intermediate binary which encodes
the relevant KLP section/reloc/symbol metadata.
After module linking, a klp post-link step (coming soon) will clean up
the mess and convert the linked .ko into a fully compliant livepatch
module.
Note this subcommand requires the diffed binaries to have been compiled
with -ffunction-sections and -fdata-sections, and processed with
'objtool --checksum'. Those constraints will be handled by a klp-build
script introduced in a later patch.
Without '-ffunction-sections -fdata-sections', reliable object diffing
would be infeasible due to toolchain limitations:
- For intra-file+intra-section references, the compiler might
occasionally generated hard-coded instruction offsets instead of
relocations.
- Section-symbol-based references can be ambiguous:
- Overlapping or zero-length symbols create ambiguity as to which
symbol is being referenced.
- A reference to the end of a symbol (e.g., checking array bounds)
can be misinterpreted as a reference to the next symbol, or vice
versa.
A potential future alternative to '-ffunction-sections -fdata-sections'
would be to introduce a toolchain option that forces symbol-based
(non-section) relocations.
Acked-by: Petr Mladek <pmladek@suse.com>
Tested-by: Joe Lawrence <joe.lawrence@redhat.com>
Signed-off-by: Josh Poimboeuf <jpoimboe@kernel.org>
2025-09-17 09:03:59 -07:00
|
|
|
|
|
|
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|
|
2026-04-29 20:07:28 -07:00
|
|
|
|
objtool/klp: Introduce klp diff subcommand for diffing object files
Add a new klp diff subcommand which performs a binary diff between two
object files and extracts changed functions into a new object which can
then be linked into a livepatch module.
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
(coming in a later patch) which injects #line directives into the
source .patch to preserve the original line numbers at compile time.
Note the end result of this subcommand is not yet functionally complete.
Livepatch needs some ELF magic which linkers don't like:
- Two relocation sections (.rela*, .klp.rela*) for the same text
section.
- Use of SHN_LIVEPATCH to mark livepatch symbols.
Unfortunately linkers tend to mangle such things. To work around that,
klp diff generates a linker-compliant intermediate binary which encodes
the relevant KLP section/reloc/symbol metadata.
After module linking, a klp post-link step (coming soon) will clean up
the mess and convert the linked .ko into a fully compliant livepatch
module.
Note this subcommand requires the diffed binaries to have been compiled
with -ffunction-sections and -fdata-sections, and processed with
'objtool --checksum'. Those constraints will be handled by a klp-build
script introduced in a later patch.
Without '-ffunction-sections -fdata-sections', reliable object diffing
would be infeasible due to toolchain limitations:
- For intra-file+intra-section references, the compiler might
occasionally generated hard-coded instruction offsets instead of
relocations.
- Section-symbol-based references can be ambiguous:
- Overlapping or zero-length symbols create ambiguity as to which
symbol is being referenced.
- A reference to the end of a symbol (e.g., checking array bounds)
can be misinterpreted as a reference to the next symbol, or vice
versa.
A potential future alternative to '-ffunction-sections -fdata-sections'
would be to introduce a toolchain option that forces symbol-based
(non-section) relocations.
Acked-by: Petr Mladek <pmladek@suse.com>
Tested-by: Joe Lawrence <joe.lawrence@redhat.com>
Signed-off-by: Josh Poimboeuf <jpoimboe@kernel.org>
2025-09-17 09:03:59 -07:00
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2026-04-29 20:07:28 -07:00
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2026-04-20 22:59:12 -07:00
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2026-04-29 20:07:28 -07:00
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objtool/klp: Introduce klp diff subcommand for diffing object files
Add a new klp diff subcommand which performs a binary diff between two
object files and extracts changed functions into a new object which can
then be linked into a livepatch module.
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
(coming in a later patch) which injects #line directives into the
source .patch to preserve the original line numbers at compile time.
Note the end result of this subcommand is not yet functionally complete.
Livepatch needs some ELF magic which linkers don't like:
- Two relocation sections (.rela*, .klp.rela*) for the same text
section.
- Use of SHN_LIVEPATCH to mark livepatch symbols.
Unfortunately linkers tend to mangle such things. To work around that,
klp diff generates a linker-compliant intermediate binary which encodes
the relevant KLP section/reloc/symbol metadata.
After module linking, a klp post-link step (coming soon) will clean up
the mess and convert the linked .ko into a fully compliant livepatch
module.
Note this subcommand requires the diffed binaries to have been compiled
with -ffunction-sections and -fdata-sections, and processed with
'objtool --checksum'. Those constraints will be handled by a klp-build
script introduced in a later patch.
Without '-ffunction-sections -fdata-sections', reliable object diffing
would be infeasible due to toolchain limitations:
- For intra-file+intra-section references, the compiler might
occasionally generated hard-coded instruction offsets instead of
relocations.
- Section-symbol-based references can be ambiguous:
- Overlapping or zero-length symbols create ambiguity as to which
symbol is being referenced.
- A reference to the end of a symbol (e.g., checking array bounds)
can be misinterpreted as a reference to the next symbol, or vice
versa.
A potential future alternative to '-ffunction-sections -fdata-sections'
would be to introduce a toolchain option that forces symbol-based
(non-section) relocations.
Acked-by: Petr Mladek <pmladek@suse.com>
Tested-by: Joe Lawrence <joe.lawrence@redhat.com>
Signed-off-by: Josh Poimboeuf <jpoimboe@kernel.org>
2025-09-17 09:03:59 -07:00
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2026-04-29 20:07:28 -07:00
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objtool/klp: Introduce klp diff subcommand for diffing object files
Add a new klp diff subcommand which performs a binary diff between two
object files and extracts changed functions into a new object which can
then be linked into a livepatch module.
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
(coming in a later patch) which injects #line directives into the
source .patch to preserve the original line numbers at compile time.
Note the end result of this subcommand is not yet functionally complete.
Livepatch needs some ELF magic which linkers don't like:
- Two relocation sections (.rela*, .klp.rela*) for the same text
section.
- Use of SHN_LIVEPATCH to mark livepatch symbols.
Unfortunately linkers tend to mangle such things. To work around that,
klp diff generates a linker-compliant intermediate binary which encodes
the relevant KLP section/reloc/symbol metadata.
After module linking, a klp post-link step (coming soon) will clean up
the mess and convert the linked .ko into a fully compliant livepatch
module.
Note this subcommand requires the diffed binaries to have been compiled
with -ffunction-sections and -fdata-sections, and processed with
'objtool --checksum'. Those constraints will be handled by a klp-build
script introduced in a later patch.
Without '-ffunction-sections -fdata-sections', reliable object diffing
would be infeasible due to toolchain limitations:
- For intra-file+intra-section references, the compiler might
occasionally generated hard-coded instruction offsets instead of
relocations.
- Section-symbol-based references can be ambiguous:
- Overlapping or zero-length symbols create ambiguity as to which
symbol is being referenced.
- A reference to the end of a symbol (e.g., checking array bounds)
can be misinterpreted as a reference to the next symbol, or vice
versa.
A potential future alternative to '-ffunction-sections -fdata-sections'
would be to introduce a toolchain option that forces symbol-based
(non-section) relocations.
Acked-by: Petr Mladek <pmladek@suse.com>
Tested-by: Joe Lawrence <joe.lawrence@redhat.com>
Signed-off-by: Josh Poimboeuf <jpoimboe@kernel.org>
2025-09-17 09:03:59 -07:00
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objtool/klp: Allow new references to module exports
klp_reloc_needed() returns true for module exports to support
late-module patching. However, clone_reloc_klp() unconditionally
rejects symbols without a twin (i.e., new references added by the
patch), even when the symbol is a known export from Module.symvers.
Relax the check: allow new references to exported symbols by only
erroring on !twin when there is no export. The export metadata from
Module.symvers provides sufficient context to emit the klp-relocation
without a twin.
For a module export that isn't sufficient on its own though, as the
resulting klp relocation will only be resolved at patch-enable time if
the exporting module is loaded.
If the original (unpatched) module already depends on the exporting
module, the dependency is safe: the module loader ensures the dependency
is satisfied before the patched module can be loaded, so the
klp relocation target will exist.
However, if the patch introduces a reference to a module that the
original doesn't depend on, there is no such guarantee. The exporting
module could be absent or could be unloaded at any time, leading to a
relocation failure or use-after-free.
So also add a build-time check: when a new symbol reference (no twin)
targets a module export, verify that the original module already has at
least one UNDEF symbol resolving to that same exporting module. If not,
error out with a diagnostic message.
Signed-off-by: Joe Lawrence <joe.lawrence@redhat.com>
Acked-by: Song Liu <song@kernel.org>
Acked-by: Joe Lawrence <joe.lawrence@redhat.com>
Link: https://patch.msgid.link/e0d725acb4774747f0e271308b4ca33daae2d5db.1786138493.git.jpoimboe@kernel.org
Signed-off-by: Josh Poimboeuf <jpoimboe@kernel.org>
2026-08-07 14:37:52 -07:00
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objtool/klp: Introduce klp diff subcommand for diffing object files
Add a new klp diff subcommand which performs a binary diff between two
object files and extracts changed functions into a new object which can
then be linked into a livepatch module.
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
(coming in a later patch) which injects #line directives into the
source .patch to preserve the original line numbers at compile time.
Note the end result of this subcommand is not yet functionally complete.
Livepatch needs some ELF magic which linkers don't like:
- Two relocation sections (.rela*, .klp.rela*) for the same text
section.
- Use of SHN_LIVEPATCH to mark livepatch symbols.
Unfortunately linkers tend to mangle such things. To work around that,
klp diff generates a linker-compliant intermediate binary which encodes
the relevant KLP section/reloc/symbol metadata.
After module linking, a klp post-link step (coming soon) will clean up
the mess and convert the linked .ko into a fully compliant livepatch
module.
Note this subcommand requires the diffed binaries to have been compiled
with -ffunction-sections and -fdata-sections, and processed with
'objtool --checksum'. Those constraints will be handled by a klp-build
script introduced in a later patch.
Without '-ffunction-sections -fdata-sections', reliable object diffing
would be infeasible due to toolchain limitations:
- For intra-file+intra-section references, the compiler might
occasionally generated hard-coded instruction offsets instead of
relocations.
- Section-symbol-based references can be ambiguous:
- Overlapping or zero-length symbols create ambiguity as to which
symbol is being referenced.
- A reference to the end of a symbol (e.g., checking array bounds)
can be misinterpreted as a reference to the next symbol, or vice
versa.
A potential future alternative to '-ffunction-sections -fdata-sections'
would be to introduce a toolchain option that forces symbol-based
(non-section) relocations.
Acked-by: Petr Mladek <pmladek@suse.com>
Tested-by: Joe Lawrence <joe.lawrence@redhat.com>
Signed-off-by: Josh Poimboeuf <jpoimboe@kernel.org>
2025-09-17 09:03:59 -07:00
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2026-08-14 19:36:34 -07:00
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objtool/klp: Introduce klp diff subcommand for diffing object files
Add a new klp diff subcommand which performs a binary diff between two
object files and extracts changed functions into a new object which can
then be linked into a livepatch module.
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
(coming in a later patch) which injects #line directives into the
source .patch to preserve the original line numbers at compile time.
Note the end result of this subcommand is not yet functionally complete.
Livepatch needs some ELF magic which linkers don't like:
- Two relocation sections (.rela*, .klp.rela*) for the same text
section.
- Use of SHN_LIVEPATCH to mark livepatch symbols.
Unfortunately linkers tend to mangle such things. To work around that,
klp diff generates a linker-compliant intermediate binary which encodes
the relevant KLP section/reloc/symbol metadata.
After module linking, a klp post-link step (coming soon) will clean up
the mess and convert the linked .ko into a fully compliant livepatch
module.
Note this subcommand requires the diffed binaries to have been compiled
with -ffunction-sections and -fdata-sections, and processed with
'objtool --checksum'. Those constraints will be handled by a klp-build
script introduced in a later patch.
Without '-ffunction-sections -fdata-sections', reliable object diffing
would be infeasible due to toolchain limitations:
- For intra-file+intra-section references, the compiler might
occasionally generated hard-coded instruction offsets instead of
relocations.
- Section-symbol-based references can be ambiguous:
- Overlapping or zero-length symbols create ambiguity as to which
symbol is being referenced.
- A reference to the end of a symbol (e.g., checking array bounds)
can be misinterpreted as a reference to the next symbol, or vice
versa.
A potential future alternative to '-ffunction-sections -fdata-sections'
would be to introduce a toolchain option that forces symbol-based
(non-section) relocations.
Acked-by: Petr Mladek <pmladek@suse.com>
Tested-by: Joe Lawrence <joe.lawrence@redhat.com>
Signed-off-by: Josh Poimboeuf <jpoimboe@kernel.org>
2025-09-17 09:03:59 -07:00
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objtool/klp: Fix false module dependencies caused by dead relocs
When creating a klp reloc, klp-diff keeps the original relocation but
converts the referenced symbol to an UNDEF/WEAK placeholder tombstone
symbol, which gets fully disabled later by klp post-link. The tombstone
symbol is only needed to avoid confusing objtool when it does the final
run on the patch module.
However, for references to exported symbols, modpost sees the reference
to the tombstone symbol as a real reference to an exported symbol,
resulting in a false module dependency getting created.
Further, for a reference to a tombstone symbol which is exported into a
module namespace, e.g. via EXPORT_SYMBOL_FOR_KVM_INTERNAL(), modpost
can't satisfy the dependency, resulting in a warning like the following:
module ... uses symbol kvm_flush_remote_tlbs from namespace
module:kvm-amd,kvm-intel, but does not import it.
Rename the placeholder tombstone symbols to ".klp.tombstone.<name>" so
modpost no longer recognizes them.
Fixes: dd590d4d57eb ("objtool/klp: Introduce klp diff subcommand for diffing object files")
Reported-by: Ben Procknow <bprockno@redhat.com>
Reported-by: Joe Lawrence <joe.lawrence@redhat.com>
Signed-off-by: Josh Poimboeuf <jpoimboe@kernel.org>
Signed-off-by: Ingo Molnar <mingo@kernel.org>
Cc: live-patching@vger.kernel.org
Link: https://lore.kernel.org/20260720145658.1103243-5-joe.lawrence@redhat.com
Link: https://patch.msgid.link/9548393f4d89ec3b498f4f69aa6ef6b9bb7150fe.1785727106.git.jpoimboe@kernel.org
2026-08-02 20:24:25 -07:00
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objtool/klp: Introduce klp diff subcommand for diffing object files
Add a new klp diff subcommand which performs a binary diff between two
object files and extracts changed functions into a new object which can
then be linked into a livepatch module.
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
(coming in a later patch) which injects #line directives into the
source .patch to preserve the original line numbers at compile time.
Note the end result of this subcommand is not yet functionally complete.
Livepatch needs some ELF magic which linkers don't like:
- Two relocation sections (.rela*, .klp.rela*) for the same text
section.
- Use of SHN_LIVEPATCH to mark livepatch symbols.
Unfortunately linkers tend to mangle such things. To work around that,
klp diff generates a linker-compliant intermediate binary which encodes
the relevant KLP section/reloc/symbol metadata.
After module linking, a klp post-link step (coming soon) will clean up
the mess and convert the linked .ko into a fully compliant livepatch
module.
Note this subcommand requires the diffed binaries to have been compiled
with -ffunction-sections and -fdata-sections, and processed with
'objtool --checksum'. Those constraints will be handled by a klp-build
script introduced in a later patch.
Without '-ffunction-sections -fdata-sections', reliable object diffing
would be infeasible due to toolchain limitations:
- For intra-file+intra-section references, the compiler might
occasionally generated hard-coded instruction offsets instead of
relocations.
- Section-symbol-based references can be ambiguous:
- Overlapping or zero-length symbols create ambiguity as to which
symbol is being referenced.
- A reference to the end of a symbol (e.g., checking array bounds)
can be misinterpreted as a reference to the next symbol, or vice
versa.
A potential future alternative to '-ffunction-sections -fdata-sections'
would be to introduce a toolchain option that forces symbol-based
(non-section) relocations.
Acked-by: Petr Mladek <pmladek@suse.com>
Tested-by: Joe Lawrence <joe.lawrence@redhat.com>
Signed-off-by: Josh Poimboeuf <jpoimboe@kernel.org>
2025-09-17 09:03:59 -07:00
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2026-08-14 19:36:34 -07:00
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|
objtool/klp: Introduce klp diff subcommand for diffing object files
Add a new klp diff subcommand which performs a binary diff between two
object files and extracts changed functions into a new object which can
then be linked into a livepatch module.
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
(coming in a later patch) which injects #line directives into the
source .patch to preserve the original line numbers at compile time.
Note the end result of this subcommand is not yet functionally complete.
Livepatch needs some ELF magic which linkers don't like:
- Two relocation sections (.rela*, .klp.rela*) for the same text
section.
- Use of SHN_LIVEPATCH to mark livepatch symbols.
Unfortunately linkers tend to mangle such things. To work around that,
klp diff generates a linker-compliant intermediate binary which encodes
the relevant KLP section/reloc/symbol metadata.
After module linking, a klp post-link step (coming soon) will clean up
the mess and convert the linked .ko into a fully compliant livepatch
module.
Note this subcommand requires the diffed binaries to have been compiled
with -ffunction-sections and -fdata-sections, and processed with
'objtool --checksum'. Those constraints will be handled by a klp-build
script introduced in a later patch.
Without '-ffunction-sections -fdata-sections', reliable object diffing
would be infeasible due to toolchain limitations:
- For intra-file+intra-section references, the compiler might
occasionally generated hard-coded instruction offsets instead of
relocations.
- Section-symbol-based references can be ambiguous:
- Overlapping or zero-length symbols create ambiguity as to which
symbol is being referenced.
- A reference to the end of a symbol (e.g., checking array bounds)
can be misinterpreted as a reference to the next symbol, or vice
versa.
A potential future alternative to '-ffunction-sections -fdata-sections'
would be to introduce a toolchain option that forces symbol-based
(non-section) relocations.
Acked-by: Petr Mladek <pmladek@suse.com>
Tested-by: Joe Lawrence <joe.lawrence@redhat.com>
Signed-off-by: Josh Poimboeuf <jpoimboe@kernel.org>
2025-09-17 09:03:59 -07:00
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objtool/klp: Allow new references to module exports
klp_reloc_needed() returns true for module exports to support
late-module patching. However, clone_reloc_klp() unconditionally
rejects symbols without a twin (i.e., new references added by the
patch), even when the symbol is a known export from Module.symvers.
Relax the check: allow new references to exported symbols by only
erroring on !twin when there is no export. The export metadata from
Module.symvers provides sufficient context to emit the klp-relocation
without a twin.
For a module export that isn't sufficient on its own though, as the
resulting klp relocation will only be resolved at patch-enable time if
the exporting module is loaded.
If the original (unpatched) module already depends on the exporting
module, the dependency is safe: the module loader ensures the dependency
is satisfied before the patched module can be loaded, so the
klp relocation target will exist.
However, if the patch introduces a reference to a module that the
original doesn't depend on, there is no such guarantee. The exporting
module could be absent or could be unloaded at any time, leading to a
relocation failure or use-after-free.
So also add a build-time check: when a new symbol reference (no twin)
targets a module export, verify that the original module already has at
least one UNDEF symbol resolving to that same exporting module. If not,
error out with a diagnostic message.
Signed-off-by: Joe Lawrence <joe.lawrence@redhat.com>
Acked-by: Song Liu <song@kernel.org>
Acked-by: Joe Lawrence <joe.lawrence@redhat.com>
Link: https://patch.msgid.link/e0d725acb4774747f0e271308b4ca33daae2d5db.1786138493.git.jpoimboe@kernel.org
Signed-off-by: Josh Poimboeuf <jpoimboe@kernel.org>
2026-08-07 14:37:52 -07:00
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|
objtool/klp: Introduce klp diff subcommand for diffing object files
Add a new klp diff subcommand which performs a binary diff between two
object files and extracts changed functions into a new object which can
then be linked into a livepatch module.
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
(coming in a later patch) which injects #line directives into the
source .patch to preserve the original line numbers at compile time.
Note the end result of this subcommand is not yet functionally complete.
Livepatch needs some ELF magic which linkers don't like:
- Two relocation sections (.rela*, .klp.rela*) for the same text
section.
- Use of SHN_LIVEPATCH to mark livepatch symbols.
Unfortunately linkers tend to mangle such things. To work around that,
klp diff generates a linker-compliant intermediate binary which encodes
the relevant KLP section/reloc/symbol metadata.
After module linking, a klp post-link step (coming soon) will clean up
the mess and convert the linked .ko into a fully compliant livepatch
module.
Note this subcommand requires the diffed binaries to have been compiled
with -ffunction-sections and -fdata-sections, and processed with
'objtool --checksum'. Those constraints will be handled by a klp-build
script introduced in a later patch.
Without '-ffunction-sections -fdata-sections', reliable object diffing
would be infeasible due to toolchain limitations:
- For intra-file+intra-section references, the compiler might
occasionally generated hard-coded instruction offsets instead of
relocations.
- Section-symbol-based references can be ambiguous:
- Overlapping or zero-length symbols create ambiguity as to which
symbol is being referenced.
- A reference to the end of a symbol (e.g., checking array bounds)
can be misinterpreted as a reference to the next symbol, or vice
versa.
A potential future alternative to '-ffunction-sections -fdata-sections'
would be to introduce a toolchain option that forces symbol-based
(non-section) relocations.
Acked-by: Petr Mladek <pmladek@suse.com>
Tested-by: Joe Lawrence <joe.lawrence@redhat.com>
Signed-off-by: Josh Poimboeuf <jpoimboe@kernel.org>
2025-09-17 09:03:59 -07:00
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objtool/klp: Fix false module dependencies caused by dead relocs
When creating a klp reloc, klp-diff keeps the original relocation but
converts the referenced symbol to an UNDEF/WEAK placeholder tombstone
symbol, which gets fully disabled later by klp post-link. The tombstone
symbol is only needed to avoid confusing objtool when it does the final
run on the patch module.
However, for references to exported symbols, modpost sees the reference
to the tombstone symbol as a real reference to an exported symbol,
resulting in a false module dependency getting created.
Further, for a reference to a tombstone symbol which is exported into a
module namespace, e.g. via EXPORT_SYMBOL_FOR_KVM_INTERNAL(), modpost
can't satisfy the dependency, resulting in a warning like the following:
module ... uses symbol kvm_flush_remote_tlbs from namespace
module:kvm-amd,kvm-intel, but does not import it.
Rename the placeholder tombstone symbols to ".klp.tombstone.<name>" so
modpost no longer recognizes them.
Fixes: dd590d4d57eb ("objtool/klp: Introduce klp diff subcommand for diffing object files")
Reported-by: Ben Procknow <bprockno@redhat.com>
Reported-by: Joe Lawrence <joe.lawrence@redhat.com>
Signed-off-by: Josh Poimboeuf <jpoimboe@kernel.org>
Signed-off-by: Ingo Molnar <mingo@kernel.org>
Cc: live-patching@vger.kernel.org
Link: https://lore.kernel.org/20260720145658.1103243-5-joe.lawrence@redhat.com
Link: https://patch.msgid.link/9548393f4d89ec3b498f4f69aa6ef6b9bb7150fe.1785727106.git.jpoimboe@kernel.org
2026-08-02 20:24:25 -07:00
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objtool/klp: Introduce klp diff subcommand for diffing object files
Add a new klp diff subcommand which performs a binary diff between two
object files and extracts changed functions into a new object which can
then be linked into a livepatch module.
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
(coming in a later patch) which injects #line directives into the
source .patch to preserve the original line numbers at compile time.
Note the end result of this subcommand is not yet functionally complete.
Livepatch needs some ELF magic which linkers don't like:
- Two relocation sections (.rela*, .klp.rela*) for the same text
section.
- Use of SHN_LIVEPATCH to mark livepatch symbols.
Unfortunately linkers tend to mangle such things. To work around that,
klp diff generates a linker-compliant intermediate binary which encodes
the relevant KLP section/reloc/symbol metadata.
After module linking, a klp post-link step (coming soon) will clean up
the mess and convert the linked .ko into a fully compliant livepatch
module.
Note this subcommand requires the diffed binaries to have been compiled
with -ffunction-sections and -fdata-sections, and processed with
'objtool --checksum'. Those constraints will be handled by a klp-build
script introduced in a later patch.
Without '-ffunction-sections -fdata-sections', reliable object diffing
would be infeasible due to toolchain limitations:
- For intra-file+intra-section references, the compiler might
occasionally generated hard-coded instruction offsets instead of
relocations.
- Section-symbol-based references can be ambiguous:
- Overlapping or zero-length symbols create ambiguity as to which
symbol is being referenced.
- A reference to the end of a symbol (e.g., checking array bounds)
can be misinterpreted as a reference to the next symbol, or vice
versa.
A potential future alternative to '-ffunction-sections -fdata-sections'
would be to introduce a toolchain option that forces symbol-based
(non-section) relocations.
Acked-by: Petr Mladek <pmladek@suse.com>
Tested-by: Joe Lawrence <joe.lawrence@redhat.com>
Signed-off-by: Josh Poimboeuf <jpoimboe@kernel.org>
2025-09-17 09:03:59 -07:00
|
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|
objtool/klp: Fix false module dependencies caused by dead relocs
When creating a klp reloc, klp-diff keeps the original relocation but
converts the referenced symbol to an UNDEF/WEAK placeholder tombstone
symbol, which gets fully disabled later by klp post-link. The tombstone
symbol is only needed to avoid confusing objtool when it does the final
run on the patch module.
However, for references to exported symbols, modpost sees the reference
to the tombstone symbol as a real reference to an exported symbol,
resulting in a false module dependency getting created.
Further, for a reference to a tombstone symbol which is exported into a
module namespace, e.g. via EXPORT_SYMBOL_FOR_KVM_INTERNAL(), modpost
can't satisfy the dependency, resulting in a warning like the following:
module ... uses symbol kvm_flush_remote_tlbs from namespace
module:kvm-amd,kvm-intel, but does not import it.
Rename the placeholder tombstone symbols to ".klp.tombstone.<name>" so
modpost no longer recognizes them.
Fixes: dd590d4d57eb ("objtool/klp: Introduce klp diff subcommand for diffing object files")
Reported-by: Ben Procknow <bprockno@redhat.com>
Reported-by: Joe Lawrence <joe.lawrence@redhat.com>
Signed-off-by: Josh Poimboeuf <jpoimboe@kernel.org>
Signed-off-by: Ingo Molnar <mingo@kernel.org>
Cc: live-patching@vger.kernel.org
Link: https://lore.kernel.org/20260720145658.1103243-5-joe.lawrence@redhat.com
Link: https://patch.msgid.link/9548393f4d89ec3b498f4f69aa6ef6b9bb7150fe.1785727106.git.jpoimboe@kernel.org
2026-08-02 20:24:25 -07:00
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objtool/klp: Introduce klp diff subcommand for diffing object files
Add a new klp diff subcommand which performs a binary diff between two
object files and extracts changed functions into a new object which can
then be linked into a livepatch module.
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
(coming in a later patch) which injects #line directives into the
source .patch to preserve the original line numbers at compile time.
Note the end result of this subcommand is not yet functionally complete.
Livepatch needs some ELF magic which linkers don't like:
- Two relocation sections (.rela*, .klp.rela*) for the same text
section.
- Use of SHN_LIVEPATCH to mark livepatch symbols.
Unfortunately linkers tend to mangle such things. To work around that,
klp diff generates a linker-compliant intermediate binary which encodes
the relevant KLP section/reloc/symbol metadata.
After module linking, a klp post-link step (coming soon) will clean up
the mess and convert the linked .ko into a fully compliant livepatch
module.
Note this subcommand requires the diffed binaries to have been compiled
with -ffunction-sections and -fdata-sections, and processed with
'objtool --checksum'. Those constraints will be handled by a klp-build
script introduced in a later patch.
Without '-ffunction-sections -fdata-sections', reliable object diffing
would be infeasible due to toolchain limitations:
- For intra-file+intra-section references, the compiler might
occasionally generated hard-coded instruction offsets instead of
relocations.
- Section-symbol-based references can be ambiguous:
- Overlapping or zero-length symbols create ambiguity as to which
symbol is being referenced.
- A reference to the end of a symbol (e.g., checking array bounds)
can be misinterpreted as a reference to the next symbol, or vice
versa.
A potential future alternative to '-ffunction-sections -fdata-sections'
would be to introduce a toolchain option that forces symbol-based
(non-section) relocations.
Acked-by: Petr Mladek <pmladek@suse.com>
Tested-by: Joe Lawrence <joe.lawrence@redhat.com>
Signed-off-by: Josh Poimboeuf <jpoimboe@kernel.org>
2025-09-17 09:03:59 -07:00
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objtool/klp: Fix false module dependencies caused by dead relocs
When creating a klp reloc, klp-diff keeps the original relocation but
converts the referenced symbol to an UNDEF/WEAK placeholder tombstone
symbol, which gets fully disabled later by klp post-link. The tombstone
symbol is only needed to avoid confusing objtool when it does the final
run on the patch module.
However, for references to exported symbols, modpost sees the reference
to the tombstone symbol as a real reference to an exported symbol,
resulting in a false module dependency getting created.
Further, for a reference to a tombstone symbol which is exported into a
module namespace, e.g. via EXPORT_SYMBOL_FOR_KVM_INTERNAL(), modpost
can't satisfy the dependency, resulting in a warning like the following:
module ... uses symbol kvm_flush_remote_tlbs from namespace
module:kvm-amd,kvm-intel, but does not import it.
Rename the placeholder tombstone symbols to ".klp.tombstone.<name>" so
modpost no longer recognizes them.
Fixes: dd590d4d57eb ("objtool/klp: Introduce klp diff subcommand for diffing object files")
Reported-by: Ben Procknow <bprockno@redhat.com>
Reported-by: Joe Lawrence <joe.lawrence@redhat.com>
Signed-off-by: Josh Poimboeuf <jpoimboe@kernel.org>
Signed-off-by: Ingo Molnar <mingo@kernel.org>
Cc: live-patching@vger.kernel.org
Link: https://lore.kernel.org/20260720145658.1103243-5-joe.lawrence@redhat.com
Link: https://patch.msgid.link/9548393f4d89ec3b498f4f69aa6ef6b9bb7150fe.1785727106.git.jpoimboe@kernel.org
2026-08-02 20:24:25 -07:00
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objtool/klp: Introduce klp diff subcommand for diffing object files
Add a new klp diff subcommand which performs a binary diff between two
object files and extracts changed functions into a new object which can
then be linked into a livepatch module.
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
(coming in a later patch) which injects #line directives into the
source .patch to preserve the original line numbers at compile time.
Note the end result of this subcommand is not yet functionally complete.
Livepatch needs some ELF magic which linkers don't like:
- Two relocation sections (.rela*, .klp.rela*) for the same text
section.
- Use of SHN_LIVEPATCH to mark livepatch symbols.
Unfortunately linkers tend to mangle such things. To work around that,
klp diff generates a linker-compliant intermediate binary which encodes
the relevant KLP section/reloc/symbol metadata.
After module linking, a klp post-link step (coming soon) will clean up
the mess and convert the linked .ko into a fully compliant livepatch
module.
Note this subcommand requires the diffed binaries to have been compiled
with -ffunction-sections and -fdata-sections, and processed with
'objtool --checksum'. Those constraints will be handled by a klp-build
script introduced in a later patch.
Without '-ffunction-sections -fdata-sections', reliable object diffing
would be infeasible due to toolchain limitations:
- For intra-file+intra-section references, the compiler might
occasionally generated hard-coded instruction offsets instead of
relocations.
- Section-symbol-based references can be ambiguous:
- Overlapping or zero-length symbols create ambiguity as to which
symbol is being referenced.
- A reference to the end of a symbol (e.g., checking array bounds)
can be misinterpreted as a reference to the next symbol, or vice
versa.
A potential future alternative to '-ffunction-sections -fdata-sections'
would be to introduce a toolchain option that forces symbol-based
(non-section) relocations.
Acked-by: Petr Mladek <pmladek@suse.com>
Tested-by: Joe Lawrence <joe.lawrence@redhat.com>
Signed-off-by: Josh Poimboeuf <jpoimboe@kernel.org>
2025-09-17 09:03:59 -07:00
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2026-08-02 20:24:28 -07:00
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objtool/klp: Introduce klp diff subcommand for diffing object files
Add a new klp diff subcommand which performs a binary diff between two
object files and extracts changed functions into a new object which can
then be linked into a livepatch module.
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
(coming in a later patch) which injects #line directives into the
source .patch to preserve the original line numbers at compile time.
Note the end result of this subcommand is not yet functionally complete.
Livepatch needs some ELF magic which linkers don't like:
- Two relocation sections (.rela*, .klp.rela*) for the same text
section.
- Use of SHN_LIVEPATCH to mark livepatch symbols.
Unfortunately linkers tend to mangle such things. To work around that,
klp diff generates a linker-compliant intermediate binary which encodes
the relevant KLP section/reloc/symbol metadata.
After module linking, a klp post-link step (coming soon) will clean up
the mess and convert the linked .ko into a fully compliant livepatch
module.
Note this subcommand requires the diffed binaries to have been compiled
with -ffunction-sections and -fdata-sections, and processed with
'objtool --checksum'. Those constraints will be handled by a klp-build
script introduced in a later patch.
Without '-ffunction-sections -fdata-sections', reliable object diffing
would be infeasible due to toolchain limitations:
- For intra-file+intra-section references, the compiler might
occasionally generated hard-coded instruction offsets instead of
relocations.
- Section-symbol-based references can be ambiguous:
- Overlapping or zero-length symbols create ambiguity as to which
symbol is being referenced.
- A reference to the end of a symbol (e.g., checking array bounds)
can be misinterpreted as a reference to the next symbol, or vice
versa.
A potential future alternative to '-ffunction-sections -fdata-sections'
would be to introduce a toolchain option that forces symbol-based
(non-section) relocations.
Acked-by: Petr Mladek <pmladek@suse.com>
Tested-by: Joe Lawrence <joe.lawrence@redhat.com>
Signed-off-by: Josh Poimboeuf <jpoimboe@kernel.org>
2025-09-17 09:03:59 -07:00
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2026-04-20 22:58:37 -07:00
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2025-09-17 09:04:00 -07:00
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objtool/klp: Introduce klp diff subcommand for diffing object files
Add a new klp diff subcommand which performs a binary diff between two
object files and extracts changed functions into a new object which can
then be linked into a livepatch module.
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
(coming in a later patch) which injects #line directives into the
source .patch to preserve the original line numbers at compile time.
Note the end result of this subcommand is not yet functionally complete.
Livepatch needs some ELF magic which linkers don't like:
- Two relocation sections (.rela*, .klp.rela*) for the same text
section.
- Use of SHN_LIVEPATCH to mark livepatch symbols.
Unfortunately linkers tend to mangle such things. To work around that,
klp diff generates a linker-compliant intermediate binary which encodes
the relevant KLP section/reloc/symbol metadata.
After module linking, a klp post-link step (coming soon) will clean up
the mess and convert the linked .ko into a fully compliant livepatch
module.
Note this subcommand requires the diffed binaries to have been compiled
with -ffunction-sections and -fdata-sections, and processed with
'objtool --checksum'. Those constraints will be handled by a klp-build
script introduced in a later patch.
Without '-ffunction-sections -fdata-sections', reliable object diffing
would be infeasible due to toolchain limitations:
- For intra-file+intra-section references, the compiler might
occasionally generated hard-coded instruction offsets instead of
relocations.
- Section-symbol-based references can be ambiguous:
- Overlapping or zero-length symbols create ambiguity as to which
symbol is being referenced.
- A reference to the end of a symbol (e.g., checking array bounds)
can be misinterpreted as a reference to the next symbol, or vice
versa.
A potential future alternative to '-ffunction-sections -fdata-sections'
would be to introduce a toolchain option that forces symbol-based
(non-section) relocations.
Acked-by: Petr Mladek <pmladek@suse.com>
Tested-by: Joe Lawrence <joe.lawrence@redhat.com>
Signed-off-by: Josh Poimboeuf <jpoimboe@kernel.org>
2025-09-17 09:03:59 -07:00
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2026-08-07 14:37:50 -07:00
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objtool/klp: Introduce klp diff subcommand for diffing object files
Add a new klp diff subcommand which performs a binary diff between two
object files and extracts changed functions into a new object which can
then be linked into a livepatch module.
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
(coming in a later patch) which injects #line directives into the
source .patch to preserve the original line numbers at compile time.
Note the end result of this subcommand is not yet functionally complete.
Livepatch needs some ELF magic which linkers don't like:
- Two relocation sections (.rela*, .klp.rela*) for the same text
section.
- Use of SHN_LIVEPATCH to mark livepatch symbols.
Unfortunately linkers tend to mangle such things. To work around that,
klp diff generates a linker-compliant intermediate binary which encodes
the relevant KLP section/reloc/symbol metadata.
After module linking, a klp post-link step (coming soon) will clean up
the mess and convert the linked .ko into a fully compliant livepatch
module.
Note this subcommand requires the diffed binaries to have been compiled
with -ffunction-sections and -fdata-sections, and processed with
'objtool --checksum'. Those constraints will be handled by a klp-build
script introduced in a later patch.
Without '-ffunction-sections -fdata-sections', reliable object diffing
would be infeasible due to toolchain limitations:
- For intra-file+intra-section references, the compiler might
occasionally generated hard-coded instruction offsets instead of
relocations.
- Section-symbol-based references can be ambiguous:
- Overlapping or zero-length symbols create ambiguity as to which
symbol is being referenced.
- A reference to the end of a symbol (e.g., checking array bounds)
can be misinterpreted as a reference to the next symbol, or vice
versa.
A potential future alternative to '-ffunction-sections -fdata-sections'
would be to introduce a toolchain option that forces symbol-based
(non-section) relocations.
Acked-by: Petr Mladek <pmladek@suse.com>
Tested-by: Joe Lawrence <joe.lawrence@redhat.com>
Signed-off-by: Josh Poimboeuf <jpoimboe@kernel.org>
2025-09-17 09:03:59 -07:00
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2026-08-14 19:36:34 -07:00
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objtool/klp: Introduce klp diff subcommand for diffing object files
Add a new klp diff subcommand which performs a binary diff between two
object files and extracts changed functions into a new object which can
then be linked into a livepatch module.
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
(coming in a later patch) which injects #line directives into the
source .patch to preserve the original line numbers at compile time.
Note the end result of this subcommand is not yet functionally complete.
Livepatch needs some ELF magic which linkers don't like:
- Two relocation sections (.rela*, .klp.rela*) for the same text
section.
- Use of SHN_LIVEPATCH to mark livepatch symbols.
Unfortunately linkers tend to mangle such things. To work around that,
klp diff generates a linker-compliant intermediate binary which encodes
the relevant KLP section/reloc/symbol metadata.
After module linking, a klp post-link step (coming soon) will clean up
the mess and convert the linked .ko into a fully compliant livepatch
module.
Note this subcommand requires the diffed binaries to have been compiled
with -ffunction-sections and -fdata-sections, and processed with
'objtool --checksum'. Those constraints will be handled by a klp-build
script introduced in a later patch.
Without '-ffunction-sections -fdata-sections', reliable object diffing
would be infeasible due to toolchain limitations:
- For intra-file+intra-section references, the compiler might
occasionally generated hard-coded instruction offsets instead of
relocations.
- Section-symbol-based references can be ambiguous:
- Overlapping or zero-length symbols create ambiguity as to which
symbol is being referenced.
- A reference to the end of a symbol (e.g., checking array bounds)
can be misinterpreted as a reference to the next symbol, or vice
versa.
A potential future alternative to '-ffunction-sections -fdata-sections'
would be to introduce a toolchain option that forces symbol-based
(non-section) relocations.
Acked-by: Petr Mladek <pmladek@suse.com>
Tested-by: Joe Lawrence <joe.lawrence@redhat.com>
Signed-off-by: Josh Poimboeuf <jpoimboe@kernel.org>
2025-09-17 09:03:59 -07:00
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2026-08-14 19:36:34 -07:00
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objtool/klp: Introduce klp diff subcommand for diffing object files
Add a new klp diff subcommand which performs a binary diff between two
object files and extracts changed functions into a new object which can
then be linked into a livepatch module.
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
(coming in a later patch) which injects #line directives into the
source .patch to preserve the original line numbers at compile time.
Note the end result of this subcommand is not yet functionally complete.
Livepatch needs some ELF magic which linkers don't like:
- Two relocation sections (.rela*, .klp.rela*) for the same text
section.
- Use of SHN_LIVEPATCH to mark livepatch symbols.
Unfortunately linkers tend to mangle such things. To work around that,
klp diff generates a linker-compliant intermediate binary which encodes
the relevant KLP section/reloc/symbol metadata.
After module linking, a klp post-link step (coming soon) will clean up
the mess and convert the linked .ko into a fully compliant livepatch
module.
Note this subcommand requires the diffed binaries to have been compiled
with -ffunction-sections and -fdata-sections, and processed with
'objtool --checksum'. Those constraints will be handled by a klp-build
script introduced in a later patch.
Without '-ffunction-sections -fdata-sections', reliable object diffing
would be infeasible due to toolchain limitations:
- For intra-file+intra-section references, the compiler might
occasionally generated hard-coded instruction offsets instead of
relocations.
- Section-symbol-based references can be ambiguous:
- Overlapping or zero-length symbols create ambiguity as to which
symbol is being referenced.
- A reference to the end of a symbol (e.g., checking array bounds)
can be misinterpreted as a reference to the next symbol, or vice
versa.
A potential future alternative to '-ffunction-sections -fdata-sections'
would be to introduce a toolchain option that forces symbol-based
(non-section) relocations.
Acked-by: Petr Mladek <pmladek@suse.com>
Tested-by: Joe Lawrence <joe.lawrence@redhat.com>
Signed-off-by: Josh Poimboeuf <jpoimboe@kernel.org>
2025-09-17 09:03:59 -07:00
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2026-08-07 14:37:50 -07:00
|
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|
objtool/klp: Introduce klp diff subcommand for diffing object files
Add a new klp diff subcommand which performs a binary diff between two
object files and extracts changed functions into a new object which can
then be linked into a livepatch module.
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
(coming in a later patch) which injects #line directives into the
source .patch to preserve the original line numbers at compile time.
Note the end result of this subcommand is not yet functionally complete.
Livepatch needs some ELF magic which linkers don't like:
- Two relocation sections (.rela*, .klp.rela*) for the same text
section.
- Use of SHN_LIVEPATCH to mark livepatch symbols.
Unfortunately linkers tend to mangle such things. To work around that,
klp diff generates a linker-compliant intermediate binary which encodes
the relevant KLP section/reloc/symbol metadata.
After module linking, a klp post-link step (coming soon) will clean up
the mess and convert the linked .ko into a fully compliant livepatch
module.
Note this subcommand requires the diffed binaries to have been compiled
with -ffunction-sections and -fdata-sections, and processed with
'objtool --checksum'. Those constraints will be handled by a klp-build
script introduced in a later patch.
Without '-ffunction-sections -fdata-sections', reliable object diffing
would be infeasible due to toolchain limitations:
- For intra-file+intra-section references, the compiler might
occasionally generated hard-coded instruction offsets instead of
relocations.
- Section-symbol-based references can be ambiguous:
- Overlapping or zero-length symbols create ambiguity as to which
symbol is being referenced.
- A reference to the end of a symbol (e.g., checking array bounds)
can be misinterpreted as a reference to the next symbol, or vice
versa.
A potential future alternative to '-ffunction-sections -fdata-sections'
would be to introduce a toolchain option that forces symbol-based
(non-section) relocations.
Acked-by: Petr Mladek <pmladek@suse.com>
Tested-by: Joe Lawrence <joe.lawrence@redhat.com>
Signed-off-by: Josh Poimboeuf <jpoimboe@kernel.org>
2025-09-17 09:03:59 -07:00
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2025-09-17 09:04:00 -07:00
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2026-04-20 22:58:37 -07:00
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2025-09-17 09:04:00 -07:00
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2026-01-22 22:44:04 +08:00
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2025-09-17 09:04:00 -07:00
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objtool/klp: Introduce klp diff subcommand for diffing object files
Add a new klp diff subcommand which performs a binary diff between two
object files and extracts changed functions into a new object which can
then be linked into a livepatch module.
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
(coming in a later patch) which injects #line directives into the
source .patch to preserve the original line numbers at compile time.
Note the end result of this subcommand is not yet functionally complete.
Livepatch needs some ELF magic which linkers don't like:
- Two relocation sections (.rela*, .klp.rela*) for the same text
section.
- Use of SHN_LIVEPATCH to mark livepatch symbols.
Unfortunately linkers tend to mangle such things. To work around that,
klp diff generates a linker-compliant intermediate binary which encodes
the relevant KLP section/reloc/symbol metadata.
After module linking, a klp post-link step (coming soon) will clean up
the mess and convert the linked .ko into a fully compliant livepatch
module.
Note this subcommand requires the diffed binaries to have been compiled
with -ffunction-sections and -fdata-sections, and processed with
'objtool --checksum'. Those constraints will be handled by a klp-build
script introduced in a later patch.
Without '-ffunction-sections -fdata-sections', reliable object diffing
would be infeasible due to toolchain limitations:
- For intra-file+intra-section references, the compiler might
occasionally generated hard-coded instruction offsets instead of
relocations.
- Section-symbol-based references can be ambiguous:
- Overlapping or zero-length symbols create ambiguity as to which
symbol is being referenced.
- A reference to the end of a symbol (e.g., checking array bounds)
can be misinterpreted as a reference to the next symbol, or vice
versa.
A potential future alternative to '-ffunction-sections -fdata-sections'
would be to introduce a toolchain option that forces symbol-based
(non-section) relocations.
Acked-by: Petr Mladek <pmladek@suse.com>
Tested-by: Joe Lawrence <joe.lawrence@redhat.com>
Signed-off-by: Josh Poimboeuf <jpoimboe@kernel.org>
2025-09-17 09:03:59 -07:00
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2025-09-17 09:04:00 -07:00
|
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objtool/klp: Introduce klp diff subcommand for diffing object files
Add a new klp diff subcommand which performs a binary diff between two
object files and extracts changed functions into a new object which can
then be linked into a livepatch module.
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
(coming in a later patch) which injects #line directives into the
source .patch to preserve the original line numbers at compile time.
Note the end result of this subcommand is not yet functionally complete.
Livepatch needs some ELF magic which linkers don't like:
- Two relocation sections (.rela*, .klp.rela*) for the same text
section.
- Use of SHN_LIVEPATCH to mark livepatch symbols.
Unfortunately linkers tend to mangle such things. To work around that,
klp diff generates a linker-compliant intermediate binary which encodes
the relevant KLP section/reloc/symbol metadata.
After module linking, a klp post-link step (coming soon) will clean up
the mess and convert the linked .ko into a fully compliant livepatch
module.
Note this subcommand requires the diffed binaries to have been compiled
with -ffunction-sections and -fdata-sections, and processed with
'objtool --checksum'. Those constraints will be handled by a klp-build
script introduced in a later patch.
Without '-ffunction-sections -fdata-sections', reliable object diffing
would be infeasible due to toolchain limitations:
- For intra-file+intra-section references, the compiler might
occasionally generated hard-coded instruction offsets instead of
relocations.
- Section-symbol-based references can be ambiguous:
- Overlapping or zero-length symbols create ambiguity as to which
symbol is being referenced.
- A reference to the end of a symbol (e.g., checking array bounds)
can be misinterpreted as a reference to the next symbol, or vice
versa.
A potential future alternative to '-ffunction-sections -fdata-sections'
would be to introduce a toolchain option that forces symbol-based
(non-section) relocations.
Acked-by: Petr Mladek <pmladek@suse.com>
Tested-by: Joe Lawrence <joe.lawrence@redhat.com>
Signed-off-by: Josh Poimboeuf <jpoimboe@kernel.org>
2025-09-17 09:03:59 -07:00
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2026-04-29 20:07:28 -07:00
|
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|
objtool/klp: Introduce klp diff subcommand for diffing object files
Add a new klp diff subcommand which performs a binary diff between two
object files and extracts changed functions into a new object which can
then be linked into a livepatch module.
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
(coming in a later patch) which injects #line directives into the
source .patch to preserve the original line numbers at compile time.
Note the end result of this subcommand is not yet functionally complete.
Livepatch needs some ELF magic which linkers don't like:
- Two relocation sections (.rela*, .klp.rela*) for the same text
section.
- Use of SHN_LIVEPATCH to mark livepatch symbols.
Unfortunately linkers tend to mangle such things. To work around that,
klp diff generates a linker-compliant intermediate binary which encodes
the relevant KLP section/reloc/symbol metadata.
After module linking, a klp post-link step (coming soon) will clean up
the mess and convert the linked .ko into a fully compliant livepatch
module.
Note this subcommand requires the diffed binaries to have been compiled
with -ffunction-sections and -fdata-sections, and processed with
'objtool --checksum'. Those constraints will be handled by a klp-build
script introduced in a later patch.
Without '-ffunction-sections -fdata-sections', reliable object diffing
would be infeasible due to toolchain limitations:
- For intra-file+intra-section references, the compiler might
occasionally generated hard-coded instruction offsets instead of
relocations.
- Section-symbol-based references can be ambiguous:
- Overlapping or zero-length symbols create ambiguity as to which
symbol is being referenced.
- A reference to the end of a symbol (e.g., checking array bounds)
can be misinterpreted as a reference to the next symbol, or vice
versa.
A potential future alternative to '-ffunction-sections -fdata-sections'
would be to introduce a toolchain option that forces symbol-based
(non-section) relocations.
Acked-by: Petr Mladek <pmladek@suse.com>
Tested-by: Joe Lawrence <joe.lawrence@redhat.com>
Signed-off-by: Josh Poimboeuf <jpoimboe@kernel.org>
2025-09-17 09:03:59 -07:00
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2026-04-20 22:58:37 -07:00
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2025-09-17 09:04:00 -07:00
|
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|
objtool/klp: Introduce klp diff subcommand for diffing object files
Add a new klp diff subcommand which performs a binary diff between two
object files and extracts changed functions into a new object which can
then be linked into a livepatch module.
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
(coming in a later patch) which injects #line directives into the
source .patch to preserve the original line numbers at compile time.
Note the end result of this subcommand is not yet functionally complete.
Livepatch needs some ELF magic which linkers don't like:
- Two relocation sections (.rela*, .klp.rela*) for the same text
section.
- Use of SHN_LIVEPATCH to mark livepatch symbols.
Unfortunately linkers tend to mangle such things. To work around that,
klp diff generates a linker-compliant intermediate binary which encodes
the relevant KLP section/reloc/symbol metadata.
After module linking, a klp post-link step (coming soon) will clean up
the mess and convert the linked .ko into a fully compliant livepatch
module.
Note this subcommand requires the diffed binaries to have been compiled
with -ffunction-sections and -fdata-sections, and processed with
'objtool --checksum'. Those constraints will be handled by a klp-build
script introduced in a later patch.
Without '-ffunction-sections -fdata-sections', reliable object diffing
would be infeasible due to toolchain limitations:
- For intra-file+intra-section references, the compiler might
occasionally generated hard-coded instruction offsets instead of
relocations.
- Section-symbol-based references can be ambiguous:
- Overlapping or zero-length symbols create ambiguity as to which
symbol is being referenced.
- A reference to the end of a symbol (e.g., checking array bounds)
can be misinterpreted as a reference to the next symbol, or vice
versa.
A potential future alternative to '-ffunction-sections -fdata-sections'
would be to introduce a toolchain option that forces symbol-based
(non-section) relocations.
Acked-by: Petr Mladek <pmladek@suse.com>
Tested-by: Joe Lawrence <joe.lawrence@redhat.com>
Signed-off-by: Josh Poimboeuf <jpoimboe@kernel.org>
2025-09-17 09:03:59 -07:00
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2026-04-09 18:34:50 -07:00
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objtool/klp: Introduce klp diff subcommand for diffing object files
Add a new klp diff subcommand which performs a binary diff between two
object files and extracts changed functions into a new object which can
then be linked into a livepatch module.
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
(coming in a later patch) which injects #line directives into the
source .patch to preserve the original line numbers at compile time.
Note the end result of this subcommand is not yet functionally complete.
Livepatch needs some ELF magic which linkers don't like:
- Two relocation sections (.rela*, .klp.rela*) for the same text
section.
- Use of SHN_LIVEPATCH to mark livepatch symbols.
Unfortunately linkers tend to mangle such things. To work around that,
klp diff generates a linker-compliant intermediate binary which encodes
the relevant KLP section/reloc/symbol metadata.
After module linking, a klp post-link step (coming soon) will clean up
the mess and convert the linked .ko into a fully compliant livepatch
module.
Note this subcommand requires the diffed binaries to have been compiled
with -ffunction-sections and -fdata-sections, and processed with
'objtool --checksum'. Those constraints will be handled by a klp-build
script introduced in a later patch.
Without '-ffunction-sections -fdata-sections', reliable object diffing
would be infeasible due to toolchain limitations:
- For intra-file+intra-section references, the compiler might
occasionally generated hard-coded instruction offsets instead of
relocations.
- Section-symbol-based references can be ambiguous:
- Overlapping or zero-length symbols create ambiguity as to which
symbol is being referenced.
- A reference to the end of a symbol (e.g., checking array bounds)
can be misinterpreted as a reference to the next symbol, or vice
versa.
A potential future alternative to '-ffunction-sections -fdata-sections'
would be to introduce a toolchain option that forces symbol-based
(non-section) relocations.
Acked-by: Petr Mladek <pmladek@suse.com>
Tested-by: Joe Lawrence <joe.lawrence@redhat.com>
Signed-off-by: Josh Poimboeuf <jpoimboe@kernel.org>
2025-09-17 09:03:59 -07:00
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objtool/klp: Ignore replacement offset of empty x86 alternatives
An x86 alternative with an empty replacement, e.g. the second entry of
ALTERNATIVE_2("orig", "repl", ft1, "", ft2)
has a replacementlen of zero. Its replacement offset still gets a
relocation, but the label it points at is the end of the previous
replacement, which is also the beginning of the *next* alternative's
replacement. The value is meaningless; get_alt_entry() already ignores
it for that reason.
klp diff doesn't ignore it. When such an alternative belongs to a
changed function, cloning its relocations drags in the unrelated
neighboring replacement, along with everything that replacement
references. On an x86 clang/lto build an empty alternative in
meminfo_proc_show() pulled in the replacement of an alternative in
proc_kcore_init(), silently emitting a klp relocation against init text
which has long since been freed by the time the patch is applied.
Add arch_alt_ignore_new_reloc() and skip such relocations when cloning.
This has to be arch specific: on arm64 a zero-length replacement instead
identifies an alternative callback, whose replacement offset points at
the callback function and must be preserved.
Fixes: dd590d4d57eb ("objtool/klp: Introduce klp diff subcommand for diffing object files")
Acked-by: Song Liu <song@kernel.org>
Acked-by: Joe Lawrence <joe.lawrence@redhat.com>
Link: https://patch.msgid.link/7a885b70974795c3417f3358869e62aafd4ef783.1786138493.git.jpoimboe@kernel.org
Signed-off-by: Josh Poimboeuf <jpoimboe@kernel.org>
2026-08-07 14:37:48 -07:00
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2026-04-09 18:34:50 -07:00
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objtool/klp: Introduce klp diff subcommand for diffing object files
Add a new klp diff subcommand which performs a binary diff between two
object files and extracts changed functions into a new object which can
then be linked into a livepatch module.
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
(coming in a later patch) which injects #line directives into the
source .patch to preserve the original line numbers at compile time.
Note the end result of this subcommand is not yet functionally complete.
Livepatch needs some ELF magic which linkers don't like:
- Two relocation sections (.rela*, .klp.rela*) for the same text
section.
- Use of SHN_LIVEPATCH to mark livepatch symbols.
Unfortunately linkers tend to mangle such things. To work around that,
klp diff generates a linker-compliant intermediate binary which encodes
the relevant KLP section/reloc/symbol metadata.
After module linking, a klp post-link step (coming soon) will clean up
the mess and convert the linked .ko into a fully compliant livepatch
module.
Note this subcommand requires the diffed binaries to have been compiled
with -ffunction-sections and -fdata-sections, and processed with
'objtool --checksum'. Those constraints will be handled by a klp-build
script introduced in a later patch.
Without '-ffunction-sections -fdata-sections', reliable object diffing
would be infeasible due to toolchain limitations:
- For intra-file+intra-section references, the compiler might
occasionally generated hard-coded instruction offsets instead of
relocations.
- Section-symbol-based references can be ambiguous:
- Overlapping or zero-length symbols create ambiguity as to which
symbol is being referenced.
- A reference to the end of a symbol (e.g., checking array bounds)
can be misinterpreted as a reference to the next symbol, or vice
versa.
A potential future alternative to '-ffunction-sections -fdata-sections'
would be to introduce a toolchain option that forces symbol-based
(non-section) relocations.
Acked-by: Petr Mladek <pmladek@suse.com>
Tested-by: Joe Lawrence <joe.lawrence@redhat.com>
Signed-off-by: Josh Poimboeuf <jpoimboe@kernel.org>
2025-09-17 09:03:59 -07:00
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2026-04-09 18:34:50 -07:00
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|
objtool/klp: Introduce klp diff subcommand for diffing object files
Add a new klp diff subcommand which performs a binary diff between two
object files and extracts changed functions into a new object which can
then be linked into a livepatch module.
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
(coming in a later patch) which injects #line directives into the
source .patch to preserve the original line numbers at compile time.
Note the end result of this subcommand is not yet functionally complete.
Livepatch needs some ELF magic which linkers don't like:
- Two relocation sections (.rela*, .klp.rela*) for the same text
section.
- Use of SHN_LIVEPATCH to mark livepatch symbols.
Unfortunately linkers tend to mangle such things. To work around that,
klp diff generates a linker-compliant intermediate binary which encodes
the relevant KLP section/reloc/symbol metadata.
After module linking, a klp post-link step (coming soon) will clean up
the mess and convert the linked .ko into a fully compliant livepatch
module.
Note this subcommand requires the diffed binaries to have been compiled
with -ffunction-sections and -fdata-sections, and processed with
'objtool --checksum'. Those constraints will be handled by a klp-build
script introduced in a later patch.
Without '-ffunction-sections -fdata-sections', reliable object diffing
would be infeasible due to toolchain limitations:
- For intra-file+intra-section references, the compiler might
occasionally generated hard-coded instruction offsets instead of
relocations.
- Section-symbol-based references can be ambiguous:
- Overlapping or zero-length symbols create ambiguity as to which
symbol is being referenced.
- A reference to the end of a symbol (e.g., checking array bounds)
can be misinterpreted as a reference to the next symbol, or vice
versa.
A potential future alternative to '-ffunction-sections -fdata-sections'
would be to introduce a toolchain option that forces symbol-based
(non-section) relocations.
Acked-by: Petr Mladek <pmladek@suse.com>
Tested-by: Joe Lawrence <joe.lawrence@redhat.com>
Signed-off-by: Josh Poimboeuf <jpoimboe@kernel.org>
2025-09-17 09:03:59 -07:00
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2026-08-08 16:17:05 -07:00
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objtool/klp: Introduce klp diff subcommand for diffing object files
Add a new klp diff subcommand which performs a binary diff between two
object files and extracts changed functions into a new object which can
then be linked into a livepatch module.
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
(coming in a later patch) which injects #line directives into the
source .patch to preserve the original line numbers at compile time.
Note the end result of this subcommand is not yet functionally complete.
Livepatch needs some ELF magic which linkers don't like:
- Two relocation sections (.rela*, .klp.rela*) for the same text
section.
- Use of SHN_LIVEPATCH to mark livepatch symbols.
Unfortunately linkers tend to mangle such things. To work around that,
klp diff generates a linker-compliant intermediate binary which encodes
the relevant KLP section/reloc/symbol metadata.
After module linking, a klp post-link step (coming soon) will clean up
the mess and convert the linked .ko into a fully compliant livepatch
module.
Note this subcommand requires the diffed binaries to have been compiled
with -ffunction-sections and -fdata-sections, and processed with
'objtool --checksum'. Those constraints will be handled by a klp-build
script introduced in a later patch.
Without '-ffunction-sections -fdata-sections', reliable object diffing
would be infeasible due to toolchain limitations:
- For intra-file+intra-section references, the compiler might
occasionally generated hard-coded instruction offsets instead of
relocations.
- Section-symbol-based references can be ambiguous:
- Overlapping or zero-length symbols create ambiguity as to which
symbol is being referenced.
- A reference to the end of a symbol (e.g., checking array bounds)
can be misinterpreted as a reference to the next symbol, or vice
versa.
A potential future alternative to '-ffunction-sections -fdata-sections'
would be to introduce a toolchain option that forces symbol-based
(non-section) relocations.
Acked-by: Petr Mladek <pmladek@suse.com>
Tested-by: Joe Lawrence <joe.lawrence@redhat.com>
Signed-off-by: Josh Poimboeuf <jpoimboe@kernel.org>
2025-09-17 09:03:59 -07:00
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2026-08-08 16:17:05 -07:00
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objtool/klp: Introduce klp diff subcommand for diffing object files
Add a new klp diff subcommand which performs a binary diff between two
object files and extracts changed functions into a new object which can
then be linked into a livepatch module.
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
(coming in a later patch) which injects #line directives into the
source .patch to preserve the original line numbers at compile time.
Note the end result of this subcommand is not yet functionally complete.
Livepatch needs some ELF magic which linkers don't like:
- Two relocation sections (.rela*, .klp.rela*) for the same text
section.
- Use of SHN_LIVEPATCH to mark livepatch symbols.
Unfortunately linkers tend to mangle such things. To work around that,
klp diff generates a linker-compliant intermediate binary which encodes
the relevant KLP section/reloc/symbol metadata.
After module linking, a klp post-link step (coming soon) will clean up
the mess and convert the linked .ko into a fully compliant livepatch
module.
Note this subcommand requires the diffed binaries to have been compiled
with -ffunction-sections and -fdata-sections, and processed with
'objtool --checksum'. Those constraints will be handled by a klp-build
script introduced in a later patch.
Without '-ffunction-sections -fdata-sections', reliable object diffing
would be infeasible due to toolchain limitations:
- For intra-file+intra-section references, the compiler might
occasionally generated hard-coded instruction offsets instead of
relocations.
- Section-symbol-based references can be ambiguous:
- Overlapping or zero-length symbols create ambiguity as to which
symbol is being referenced.
- A reference to the end of a symbol (e.g., checking array bounds)
can be misinterpreted as a reference to the next symbol, or vice
versa.
A potential future alternative to '-ffunction-sections -fdata-sections'
would be to introduce a toolchain option that forces symbol-based
(non-section) relocations.
Acked-by: Petr Mladek <pmladek@suse.com>
Tested-by: Joe Lawrence <joe.lawrence@redhat.com>
Signed-off-by: Josh Poimboeuf <jpoimboe@kernel.org>
2025-09-17 09:03:59 -07:00
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2026-03-24 17:34:16 -04:00
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objtool/klp: Introduce klp diff subcommand for diffing object files
Add a new klp diff subcommand which performs a binary diff between two
object files and extracts changed functions into a new object which can
then be linked into a livepatch module.
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
(coming in a later patch) which injects #line directives into the
source .patch to preserve the original line numbers at compile time.
Note the end result of this subcommand is not yet functionally complete.
Livepatch needs some ELF magic which linkers don't like:
- Two relocation sections (.rela*, .klp.rela*) for the same text
section.
- Use of SHN_LIVEPATCH to mark livepatch symbols.
Unfortunately linkers tend to mangle such things. To work around that,
klp diff generates a linker-compliant intermediate binary which encodes
the relevant KLP section/reloc/symbol metadata.
After module linking, a klp post-link step (coming soon) will clean up
the mess and convert the linked .ko into a fully compliant livepatch
module.
Note this subcommand requires the diffed binaries to have been compiled
with -ffunction-sections and -fdata-sections, and processed with
'objtool --checksum'. Those constraints will be handled by a klp-build
script introduced in a later patch.
Without '-ffunction-sections -fdata-sections', reliable object diffing
would be infeasible due to toolchain limitations:
- For intra-file+intra-section references, the compiler might
occasionally generated hard-coded instruction offsets instead of
relocations.
- Section-symbol-based references can be ambiguous:
- Overlapping or zero-length symbols create ambiguity as to which
symbol is being referenced.
- A reference to the end of a symbol (e.g., checking array bounds)
can be misinterpreted as a reference to the next symbol, or vice
versa.
A potential future alternative to '-ffunction-sections -fdata-sections'
would be to introduce a toolchain option that forces symbol-based
(non-section) relocations.
Acked-by: Petr Mladek <pmladek@suse.com>
Tested-by: Joe Lawrence <joe.lawrence@redhat.com>
Signed-off-by: Josh Poimboeuf <jpoimboe@kernel.org>
2025-09-17 09:03:59 -07:00
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2026-08-07 14:37:47 -07:00
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objtool/klp: Introduce klp diff subcommand for diffing object files
Add a new klp diff subcommand which performs a binary diff between two
object files and extracts changed functions into a new object which can
then be linked into a livepatch module.
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
(coming in a later patch) which injects #line directives into the
source .patch to preserve the original line numbers at compile time.
Note the end result of this subcommand is not yet functionally complete.
Livepatch needs some ELF magic which linkers don't like:
- Two relocation sections (.rela*, .klp.rela*) for the same text
section.
- Use of SHN_LIVEPATCH to mark livepatch symbols.
Unfortunately linkers tend to mangle such things. To work around that,
klp diff generates a linker-compliant intermediate binary which encodes
the relevant KLP section/reloc/symbol metadata.
After module linking, a klp post-link step (coming soon) will clean up
the mess and convert the linked .ko into a fully compliant livepatch
module.
Note this subcommand requires the diffed binaries to have been compiled
with -ffunction-sections and -fdata-sections, and processed with
'objtool --checksum'. Those constraints will be handled by a klp-build
script introduced in a later patch.
Without '-ffunction-sections -fdata-sections', reliable object diffing
would be infeasible due to toolchain limitations:
- For intra-file+intra-section references, the compiler might
occasionally generated hard-coded instruction offsets instead of
relocations.
- Section-symbol-based references can be ambiguous:
- Overlapping or zero-length symbols create ambiguity as to which
symbol is being referenced.
- A reference to the end of a symbol (e.g., checking array bounds)
can be misinterpreted as a reference to the next symbol, or vice
versa.
A potential future alternative to '-ffunction-sections -fdata-sections'
would be to introduce a toolchain option that forces symbol-based
(non-section) relocations.
Acked-by: Petr Mladek <pmladek@suse.com>
Tested-by: Joe Lawrence <joe.lawrence@redhat.com>
Signed-off-by: Josh Poimboeuf <jpoimboe@kernel.org>
2025-09-17 09:03:59 -07:00
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2026-08-07 14:37:47 -07:00
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objtool/klp: Introduce klp diff subcommand for diffing object files
Add a new klp diff subcommand which performs a binary diff between two
object files and extracts changed functions into a new object which can
then be linked into a livepatch module.
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
(coming in a later patch) which injects #line directives into the
source .patch to preserve the original line numbers at compile time.
Note the end result of this subcommand is not yet functionally complete.
Livepatch needs some ELF magic which linkers don't like:
- Two relocation sections (.rela*, .klp.rela*) for the same text
section.
- Use of SHN_LIVEPATCH to mark livepatch symbols.
Unfortunately linkers tend to mangle such things. To work around that,
klp diff generates a linker-compliant intermediate binary which encodes
the relevant KLP section/reloc/symbol metadata.
After module linking, a klp post-link step (coming soon) will clean up
the mess and convert the linked .ko into a fully compliant livepatch
module.
Note this subcommand requires the diffed binaries to have been compiled
with -ffunction-sections and -fdata-sections, and processed with
'objtool --checksum'. Those constraints will be handled by a klp-build
script introduced in a later patch.
Without '-ffunction-sections -fdata-sections', reliable object diffing
would be infeasible due to toolchain limitations:
- For intra-file+intra-section references, the compiler might
occasionally generated hard-coded instruction offsets instead of
relocations.
- Section-symbol-based references can be ambiguous:
- Overlapping or zero-length symbols create ambiguity as to which
symbol is being referenced.
- A reference to the end of a symbol (e.g., checking array bounds)
can be misinterpreted as a reference to the next symbol, or vice
versa.
A potential future alternative to '-ffunction-sections -fdata-sections'
would be to introduce a toolchain option that forces symbol-based
(non-section) relocations.
Acked-by: Petr Mladek <pmladek@suse.com>
Tested-by: Joe Lawrence <joe.lawrence@redhat.com>
Signed-off-by: Josh Poimboeuf <jpoimboe@kernel.org>
2025-09-17 09:03:59 -07:00
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2026-08-07 14:37:47 -07:00
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objtool/klp: Introduce klp diff subcommand for diffing object files
Add a new klp diff subcommand which performs a binary diff between two
object files and extracts changed functions into a new object which can
then be linked into a livepatch module.
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
(coming in a later patch) which injects #line directives into the
source .patch to preserve the original line numbers at compile time.
Note the end result of this subcommand is not yet functionally complete.
Livepatch needs some ELF magic which linkers don't like:
- Two relocation sections (.rela*, .klp.rela*) for the same text
section.
- Use of SHN_LIVEPATCH to mark livepatch symbols.
Unfortunately linkers tend to mangle such things. To work around that,
klp diff generates a linker-compliant intermediate binary which encodes
the relevant KLP section/reloc/symbol metadata.
After module linking, a klp post-link step (coming soon) will clean up
the mess and convert the linked .ko into a fully compliant livepatch
module.
Note this subcommand requires the diffed binaries to have been compiled
with -ffunction-sections and -fdata-sections, and processed with
'objtool --checksum'. Those constraints will be handled by a klp-build
script introduced in a later patch.
Without '-ffunction-sections -fdata-sections', reliable object diffing
would be infeasible due to toolchain limitations:
- For intra-file+intra-section references, the compiler might
occasionally generated hard-coded instruction offsets instead of
relocations.
- Section-symbol-based references can be ambiguous:
- Overlapping or zero-length symbols create ambiguity as to which
symbol is being referenced.
- A reference to the end of a symbol (e.g., checking array bounds)
can be misinterpreted as a reference to the next symbol, or vice
versa.
A potential future alternative to '-ffunction-sections -fdata-sections'
would be to introduce a toolchain option that forces symbol-based
(non-section) relocations.
Acked-by: Petr Mladek <pmladek@suse.com>
Tested-by: Joe Lawrence <joe.lawrence@redhat.com>
Signed-off-by: Josh Poimboeuf <jpoimboe@kernel.org>
2025-09-17 09:03:59 -07:00
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2026-08-07 14:37:47 -07:00
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objtool/klp: Introduce klp diff subcommand for diffing object files
Add a new klp diff subcommand which performs a binary diff between two
object files and extracts changed functions into a new object which can
then be linked into a livepatch module.
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
(coming in a later patch) which injects #line directives into the
source .patch to preserve the original line numbers at compile time.
Note the end result of this subcommand is not yet functionally complete.
Livepatch needs some ELF magic which linkers don't like:
- Two relocation sections (.rela*, .klp.rela*) for the same text
section.
- Use of SHN_LIVEPATCH to mark livepatch symbols.
Unfortunately linkers tend to mangle such things. To work around that,
klp diff generates a linker-compliant intermediate binary which encodes
the relevant KLP section/reloc/symbol metadata.
After module linking, a klp post-link step (coming soon) will clean up
the mess and convert the linked .ko into a fully compliant livepatch
module.
Note this subcommand requires the diffed binaries to have been compiled
with -ffunction-sections and -fdata-sections, and processed with
'objtool --checksum'. Those constraints will be handled by a klp-build
script introduced in a later patch.
Without '-ffunction-sections -fdata-sections', reliable object diffing
would be infeasible due to toolchain limitations:
- For intra-file+intra-section references, the compiler might
occasionally generated hard-coded instruction offsets instead of
relocations.
- Section-symbol-based references can be ambiguous:
- Overlapping or zero-length symbols create ambiguity as to which
symbol is being referenced.
- A reference to the end of a symbol (e.g., checking array bounds)
can be misinterpreted as a reference to the next symbol, or vice
versa.
A potential future alternative to '-ffunction-sections -fdata-sections'
would be to introduce a toolchain option that forces symbol-based
(non-section) relocations.
Acked-by: Petr Mladek <pmladek@suse.com>
Tested-by: Joe Lawrence <joe.lawrence@redhat.com>
Signed-off-by: Josh Poimboeuf <jpoimboe@kernel.org>
2025-09-17 09:03:59 -07:00
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2026-03-24 17:34:16 -04:00
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objtool/klp: Introduce klp diff subcommand for diffing object files
Add a new klp diff subcommand which performs a binary diff between two
object files and extracts changed functions into a new object which can
then be linked into a livepatch module.
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
(coming in a later patch) which injects #line directives into the
source .patch to preserve the original line numbers at compile time.
Note the end result of this subcommand is not yet functionally complete.
Livepatch needs some ELF magic which linkers don't like:
- Two relocation sections (.rela*, .klp.rela*) for the same text
section.
- Use of SHN_LIVEPATCH to mark livepatch symbols.
Unfortunately linkers tend to mangle such things. To work around that,
klp diff generates a linker-compliant intermediate binary which encodes
the relevant KLP section/reloc/symbol metadata.
After module linking, a klp post-link step (coming soon) will clean up
the mess and convert the linked .ko into a fully compliant livepatch
module.
Note this subcommand requires the diffed binaries to have been compiled
with -ffunction-sections and -fdata-sections, and processed with
'objtool --checksum'. Those constraints will be handled by a klp-build
script introduced in a later patch.
Without '-ffunction-sections -fdata-sections', reliable object diffing
would be infeasible due to toolchain limitations:
- For intra-file+intra-section references, the compiler might
occasionally generated hard-coded instruction offsets instead of
relocations.
- Section-symbol-based references can be ambiguous:
- Overlapping or zero-length symbols create ambiguity as to which
symbol is being referenced.
- A reference to the end of a symbol (e.g., checking array bounds)
can be misinterpreted as a reference to the next symbol, or vice
versa.
A potential future alternative to '-ffunction-sections -fdata-sections'
would be to introduce a toolchain option that forces symbol-based
(non-section) relocations.
Acked-by: Petr Mladek <pmladek@suse.com>
Tested-by: Joe Lawrence <joe.lawrence@redhat.com>
Signed-off-by: Josh Poimboeuf <jpoimboe@kernel.org>
2025-09-17 09:03:59 -07:00
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2026-08-08 16:17:05 -07:00
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objtool/klp: Introduce klp diff subcommand for diffing object files
Add a new klp diff subcommand which performs a binary diff between two
object files and extracts changed functions into a new object which can
then be linked into a livepatch module.
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
(coming in a later patch) which injects #line directives into the
source .patch to preserve the original line numbers at compile time.
Note the end result of this subcommand is not yet functionally complete.
Livepatch needs some ELF magic which linkers don't like:
- Two relocation sections (.rela*, .klp.rela*) for the same text
section.
- Use of SHN_LIVEPATCH to mark livepatch symbols.
Unfortunately linkers tend to mangle such things. To work around that,
klp diff generates a linker-compliant intermediate binary which encodes
the relevant KLP section/reloc/symbol metadata.
After module linking, a klp post-link step (coming soon) will clean up
the mess and convert the linked .ko into a fully compliant livepatch
module.
Note this subcommand requires the diffed binaries to have been compiled
with -ffunction-sections and -fdata-sections, and processed with
'objtool --checksum'. Those constraints will be handled by a klp-build
script introduced in a later patch.
Without '-ffunction-sections -fdata-sections', reliable object diffing
would be infeasible due to toolchain limitations:
- For intra-file+intra-section references, the compiler might
occasionally generated hard-coded instruction offsets instead of
relocations.
- Section-symbol-based references can be ambiguous:
- Overlapping or zero-length symbols create ambiguity as to which
symbol is being referenced.
- A reference to the end of a symbol (e.g., checking array bounds)
can be misinterpreted as a reference to the next symbol, or vice
versa.
A potential future alternative to '-ffunction-sections -fdata-sections'
would be to introduce a toolchain option that forces symbol-based
(non-section) relocations.
Acked-by: Petr Mladek <pmladek@suse.com>
Tested-by: Joe Lawrence <joe.lawrence@redhat.com>
Signed-off-by: Josh Poimboeuf <jpoimboe@kernel.org>
2025-09-17 09:03:59 -07:00
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2026-04-03 14:53:32 -07:00
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objtool/klp: Introduce klp diff subcommand for diffing object files
Add a new klp diff subcommand which performs a binary diff between two
object files and extracts changed functions into a new object which can
then be linked into a livepatch module.
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
(coming in a later patch) which injects #line directives into the
source .patch to preserve the original line numbers at compile time.
Note the end result of this subcommand is not yet functionally complete.
Livepatch needs some ELF magic which linkers don't like:
- Two relocation sections (.rela*, .klp.rela*) for the same text
section.
- Use of SHN_LIVEPATCH to mark livepatch symbols.
Unfortunately linkers tend to mangle such things. To work around that,
klp diff generates a linker-compliant intermediate binary which encodes
the relevant KLP section/reloc/symbol metadata.
After module linking, a klp post-link step (coming soon) will clean up
the mess and convert the linked .ko into a fully compliant livepatch
module.
Note this subcommand requires the diffed binaries to have been compiled
with -ffunction-sections and -fdata-sections, and processed with
'objtool --checksum'. Those constraints will be handled by a klp-build
script introduced in a later patch.
Without '-ffunction-sections -fdata-sections', reliable object diffing
would be infeasible due to toolchain limitations:
- For intra-file+intra-section references, the compiler might
occasionally generated hard-coded instruction offsets instead of
relocations.
- Section-symbol-based references can be ambiguous:
- Overlapping or zero-length symbols create ambiguity as to which
symbol is being referenced.
- A reference to the end of a symbol (e.g., checking array bounds)
can be misinterpreted as a reference to the next symbol, or vice
versa.
A potential future alternative to '-ffunction-sections -fdata-sections'
would be to introduce a toolchain option that forces symbol-based
(non-section) relocations.
Acked-by: Petr Mladek <pmladek@suse.com>
Tested-by: Joe Lawrence <joe.lawrence@redhat.com>
Signed-off-by: Josh Poimboeuf <jpoimboe@kernel.org>
2025-09-17 09:03:59 -07:00
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2026-04-03 14:53:32 -07:00
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objtool/klp: Introduce klp diff subcommand for diffing object files
Add a new klp diff subcommand which performs a binary diff between two
object files and extracts changed functions into a new object which can
then be linked into a livepatch module.
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
(coming in a later patch) which injects #line directives into the
source .patch to preserve the original line numbers at compile time.
Note the end result of this subcommand is not yet functionally complete.
Livepatch needs some ELF magic which linkers don't like:
- Two relocation sections (.rela*, .klp.rela*) for the same text
section.
- Use of SHN_LIVEPATCH to mark livepatch symbols.
Unfortunately linkers tend to mangle such things. To work around that,
klp diff generates a linker-compliant intermediate binary which encodes
the relevant KLP section/reloc/symbol metadata.
After module linking, a klp post-link step (coming soon) will clean up
the mess and convert the linked .ko into a fully compliant livepatch
module.
Note this subcommand requires the diffed binaries to have been compiled
with -ffunction-sections and -fdata-sections, and processed with
'objtool --checksum'. Those constraints will be handled by a klp-build
script introduced in a later patch.
Without '-ffunction-sections -fdata-sections', reliable object diffing
would be infeasible due to toolchain limitations:
- For intra-file+intra-section references, the compiler might
occasionally generated hard-coded instruction offsets instead of
relocations.
- Section-symbol-based references can be ambiguous:
- Overlapping or zero-length symbols create ambiguity as to which
symbol is being referenced.
- A reference to the end of a symbol (e.g., checking array bounds)
can be misinterpreted as a reference to the next symbol, or vice
versa.
A potential future alternative to '-ffunction-sections -fdata-sections'
would be to introduce a toolchain option that forces symbol-based
(non-section) relocations.
Acked-by: Petr Mladek <pmladek@suse.com>
Tested-by: Joe Lawrence <joe.lawrence@redhat.com>
Signed-off-by: Josh Poimboeuf <jpoimboe@kernel.org>
2025-09-17 09:03:59 -07:00
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2026-02-10 13:50:10 -08:00
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objtool/klp: Introduce klp diff subcommand for diffing object files
Add a new klp diff subcommand which performs a binary diff between two
object files and extracts changed functions into a new object which can
then be linked into a livepatch module.
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
(coming in a later patch) which injects #line directives into the
source .patch to preserve the original line numbers at compile time.
Note the end result of this subcommand is not yet functionally complete.
Livepatch needs some ELF magic which linkers don't like:
- Two relocation sections (.rela*, .klp.rela*) for the same text
section.
- Use of SHN_LIVEPATCH to mark livepatch symbols.
Unfortunately linkers tend to mangle such things. To work around that,
klp diff generates a linker-compliant intermediate binary which encodes
the relevant KLP section/reloc/symbol metadata.
After module linking, a klp post-link step (coming soon) will clean up
the mess and convert the linked .ko into a fully compliant livepatch
module.
Note this subcommand requires the diffed binaries to have been compiled
with -ffunction-sections and -fdata-sections, and processed with
'objtool --checksum'. Those constraints will be handled by a klp-build
script introduced in a later patch.
Without '-ffunction-sections -fdata-sections', reliable object diffing
would be infeasible due to toolchain limitations:
- For intra-file+intra-section references, the compiler might
occasionally generated hard-coded instruction offsets instead of
relocations.
- Section-symbol-based references can be ambiguous:
- Overlapping or zero-length symbols create ambiguity as to which
symbol is being referenced.
- A reference to the end of a symbol (e.g., checking array bounds)
can be misinterpreted as a reference to the next symbol, or vice
versa.
A potential future alternative to '-ffunction-sections -fdata-sections'
would be to introduce a toolchain option that forces symbol-based
(non-section) relocations.
Acked-by: Petr Mladek <pmladek@suse.com>
Tested-by: Joe Lawrence <joe.lawrence@redhat.com>
Signed-off-by: Josh Poimboeuf <jpoimboe@kernel.org>
2025-09-17 09:03:59 -07:00
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2026-02-10 13:50:10 -08:00
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objtool/klp: Introduce klp diff subcommand for diffing object files
Add a new klp diff subcommand which performs a binary diff between two
object files and extracts changed functions into a new object which can
then be linked into a livepatch module.
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
(coming in a later patch) which injects #line directives into the
source .patch to preserve the original line numbers at compile time.
Note the end result of this subcommand is not yet functionally complete.
Livepatch needs some ELF magic which linkers don't like:
- Two relocation sections (.rela*, .klp.rela*) for the same text
section.
- Use of SHN_LIVEPATCH to mark livepatch symbols.
Unfortunately linkers tend to mangle such things. To work around that,
klp diff generates a linker-compliant intermediate binary which encodes
the relevant KLP section/reloc/symbol metadata.
After module linking, a klp post-link step (coming soon) will clean up
the mess and convert the linked .ko into a fully compliant livepatch
module.
Note this subcommand requires the diffed binaries to have been compiled
with -ffunction-sections and -fdata-sections, and processed with
'objtool --checksum'. Those constraints will be handled by a klp-build
script introduced in a later patch.
Without '-ffunction-sections -fdata-sections', reliable object diffing
would be infeasible due to toolchain limitations:
- For intra-file+intra-section references, the compiler might
occasionally generated hard-coded instruction offsets instead of
relocations.
- Section-symbol-based references can be ambiguous:
- Overlapping or zero-length symbols create ambiguity as to which
symbol is being referenced.
- A reference to the end of a symbol (e.g., checking array bounds)
can be misinterpreted as a reference to the next symbol, or vice
versa.
A potential future alternative to '-ffunction-sections -fdata-sections'
would be to introduce a toolchain option that forces symbol-based
(non-section) relocations.
Acked-by: Petr Mladek <pmladek@suse.com>
Tested-by: Joe Lawrence <joe.lawrence@redhat.com>
Signed-off-by: Josh Poimboeuf <jpoimboe@kernel.org>
2025-09-17 09:03:59 -07:00
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2026-02-10 13:50:10 -08:00
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|
objtool/klp: Introduce klp diff subcommand for diffing object files
Add a new klp diff subcommand which performs a binary diff between two
object files and extracts changed functions into a new object which can
then be linked into a livepatch module.
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
(coming in a later patch) which injects #line directives into the
source .patch to preserve the original line numbers at compile time.
Note the end result of this subcommand is not yet functionally complete.
Livepatch needs some ELF magic which linkers don't like:
- Two relocation sections (.rela*, .klp.rela*) for the same text
section.
- Use of SHN_LIVEPATCH to mark livepatch symbols.
Unfortunately linkers tend to mangle such things. To work around that,
klp diff generates a linker-compliant intermediate binary which encodes
the relevant KLP section/reloc/symbol metadata.
After module linking, a klp post-link step (coming soon) will clean up
the mess and convert the linked .ko into a fully compliant livepatch
module.
Note this subcommand requires the diffed binaries to have been compiled
with -ffunction-sections and -fdata-sections, and processed with
'objtool --checksum'. Those constraints will be handled by a klp-build
script introduced in a later patch.
Without '-ffunction-sections -fdata-sections', reliable object diffing
would be infeasible due to toolchain limitations:
- For intra-file+intra-section references, the compiler might
occasionally generated hard-coded instruction offsets instead of
relocations.
- Section-symbol-based references can be ambiguous:
- Overlapping or zero-length symbols create ambiguity as to which
symbol is being referenced.
- A reference to the end of a symbol (e.g., checking array bounds)
can be misinterpreted as a reference to the next symbol, or vice
versa.
A potential future alternative to '-ffunction-sections -fdata-sections'
would be to introduce a toolchain option that forces symbol-based
(non-section) relocations.
Acked-by: Petr Mladek <pmladek@suse.com>
Tested-by: Joe Lawrence <joe.lawrence@redhat.com>
Signed-off-by: Josh Poimboeuf <jpoimboe@kernel.org>
2025-09-17 09:03:59 -07:00
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2026-02-10 13:50:11 -08:00
|
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|
objtool/klp: Introduce klp diff subcommand for diffing object files
Add a new klp diff subcommand which performs a binary diff between two
object files and extracts changed functions into a new object which can
then be linked into a livepatch module.
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
(coming in a later patch) which injects #line directives into the
source .patch to preserve the original line numbers at compile time.
Note the end result of this subcommand is not yet functionally complete.
Livepatch needs some ELF magic which linkers don't like:
- Two relocation sections (.rela*, .klp.rela*) for the same text
section.
- Use of SHN_LIVEPATCH to mark livepatch symbols.
Unfortunately linkers tend to mangle such things. To work around that,
klp diff generates a linker-compliant intermediate binary which encodes
the relevant KLP section/reloc/symbol metadata.
After module linking, a klp post-link step (coming soon) will clean up
the mess and convert the linked .ko into a fully compliant livepatch
module.
Note this subcommand requires the diffed binaries to have been compiled
with -ffunction-sections and -fdata-sections, and processed with
'objtool --checksum'. Those constraints will be handled by a klp-build
script introduced in a later patch.
Without '-ffunction-sections -fdata-sections', reliable object diffing
would be infeasible due to toolchain limitations:
- For intra-file+intra-section references, the compiler might
occasionally generated hard-coded instruction offsets instead of
relocations.
- Section-symbol-based references can be ambiguous:
- Overlapping or zero-length symbols create ambiguity as to which
symbol is being referenced.
- A reference to the end of a symbol (e.g., checking array bounds)
can be misinterpreted as a reference to the next symbol, or vice
versa.
A potential future alternative to '-ffunction-sections -fdata-sections'
would be to introduce a toolchain option that forces symbol-based
(non-section) relocations.
Acked-by: Petr Mladek <pmladek@suse.com>
Tested-by: Joe Lawrence <joe.lawrence@redhat.com>
Signed-off-by: Josh Poimboeuf <jpoimboe@kernel.org>
2025-09-17 09:03:59 -07:00
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2026-02-10 13:50:09 -08:00
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objtool/klp: Introduce klp diff subcommand for diffing object files
Add a new klp diff subcommand which performs a binary diff between two
object files and extracts changed functions into a new object which can
then be linked into a livepatch module.
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
(coming in a later patch) which injects #line directives into the
source .patch to preserve the original line numbers at compile time.
Note the end result of this subcommand is not yet functionally complete.
Livepatch needs some ELF magic which linkers don't like:
- Two relocation sections (.rela*, .klp.rela*) for the same text
section.
- Use of SHN_LIVEPATCH to mark livepatch symbols.
Unfortunately linkers tend to mangle such things. To work around that,
klp diff generates a linker-compliant intermediate binary which encodes
the relevant KLP section/reloc/symbol metadata.
After module linking, a klp post-link step (coming soon) will clean up
the mess and convert the linked .ko into a fully compliant livepatch
module.
Note this subcommand requires the diffed binaries to have been compiled
with -ffunction-sections and -fdata-sections, and processed with
'objtool --checksum'. Those constraints will be handled by a klp-build
script introduced in a later patch.
Without '-ffunction-sections -fdata-sections', reliable object diffing
would be infeasible due to toolchain limitations:
- For intra-file+intra-section references, the compiler might
occasionally generated hard-coded instruction offsets instead of
relocations.
- Section-symbol-based references can be ambiguous:
- Overlapping or zero-length symbols create ambiguity as to which
symbol is being referenced.
- A reference to the end of a symbol (e.g., checking array bounds)
can be misinterpreted as a reference to the next symbol, or vice
versa.
A potential future alternative to '-ffunction-sections -fdata-sections'
would be to introduce a toolchain option that forces symbol-based
(non-section) relocations.
Acked-by: Petr Mladek <pmladek@suse.com>
Tested-by: Joe Lawrence <joe.lawrence@redhat.com>
Signed-off-by: Josh Poimboeuf <jpoimboe@kernel.org>
2025-09-17 09:03:59 -07:00
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2026-02-10 13:50:11 -08:00
|
|
|
|
objtool/klp: Introduce klp diff subcommand for diffing object files
Add a new klp diff subcommand which performs a binary diff between two
object files and extracts changed functions into a new object which can
then be linked into a livepatch module.
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
(coming in a later patch) which injects #line directives into the
source .patch to preserve the original line numbers at compile time.
Note the end result of this subcommand is not yet functionally complete.
Livepatch needs some ELF magic which linkers don't like:
- Two relocation sections (.rela*, .klp.rela*) for the same text
section.
- Use of SHN_LIVEPATCH to mark livepatch symbols.
Unfortunately linkers tend to mangle such things. To work around that,
klp diff generates a linker-compliant intermediate binary which encodes
the relevant KLP section/reloc/symbol metadata.
After module linking, a klp post-link step (coming soon) will clean up
the mess and convert the linked .ko into a fully compliant livepatch
module.
Note this subcommand requires the diffed binaries to have been compiled
with -ffunction-sections and -fdata-sections, and processed with
'objtool --checksum'. Those constraints will be handled by a klp-build
script introduced in a later patch.
Without '-ffunction-sections -fdata-sections', reliable object diffing
would be infeasible due to toolchain limitations:
- For intra-file+intra-section references, the compiler might
occasionally generated hard-coded instruction offsets instead of
relocations.
- Section-symbol-based references can be ambiguous:
- Overlapping or zero-length symbols create ambiguity as to which
symbol is being referenced.
- A reference to the end of a symbol (e.g., checking array bounds)
can be misinterpreted as a reference to the next symbol, or vice
versa.
A potential future alternative to '-ffunction-sections -fdata-sections'
would be to introduce a toolchain option that forces symbol-based
(non-section) relocations.
Acked-by: Petr Mladek <pmladek@suse.com>
Tested-by: Joe Lawrence <joe.lawrence@redhat.com>
Signed-off-by: Josh Poimboeuf <jpoimboe@kernel.org>
2025-09-17 09:03:59 -07:00
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2026-02-10 13:50:11 -08:00
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objtool/klp: Introduce klp diff subcommand for diffing object files
Add a new klp diff subcommand which performs a binary diff between two
object files and extracts changed functions into a new object which can
then be linked into a livepatch module.
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
(coming in a later patch) which injects #line directives into the
source .patch to preserve the original line numbers at compile time.
Note the end result of this subcommand is not yet functionally complete.
Livepatch needs some ELF magic which linkers don't like:
- Two relocation sections (.rela*, .klp.rela*) for the same text
section.
- Use of SHN_LIVEPATCH to mark livepatch symbols.
Unfortunately linkers tend to mangle such things. To work around that,
klp diff generates a linker-compliant intermediate binary which encodes
the relevant KLP section/reloc/symbol metadata.
After module linking, a klp post-link step (coming soon) will clean up
the mess and convert the linked .ko into a fully compliant livepatch
module.
Note this subcommand requires the diffed binaries to have been compiled
with -ffunction-sections and -fdata-sections, and processed with
'objtool --checksum'. Those constraints will be handled by a klp-build
script introduced in a later patch.
Without '-ffunction-sections -fdata-sections', reliable object diffing
would be infeasible due to toolchain limitations:
- For intra-file+intra-section references, the compiler might
occasionally generated hard-coded instruction offsets instead of
relocations.
- Section-symbol-based references can be ambiguous:
- Overlapping or zero-length symbols create ambiguity as to which
symbol is being referenced.
- A reference to the end of a symbol (e.g., checking array bounds)
can be misinterpreted as a reference to the next symbol, or vice
versa.
A potential future alternative to '-ffunction-sections -fdata-sections'
would be to introduce a toolchain option that forces symbol-based
(non-section) relocations.
Acked-by: Petr Mladek <pmladek@suse.com>
Tested-by: Joe Lawrence <joe.lawrence@redhat.com>
Signed-off-by: Josh Poimboeuf <jpoimboe@kernel.org>
2025-09-17 09:03:59 -07:00
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2026-02-10 13:50:11 -08:00
|
|
|
|
objtool/klp: Introduce klp diff subcommand for diffing object files
Add a new klp diff subcommand which performs a binary diff between two
object files and extracts changed functions into a new object which can
then be linked into a livepatch module.
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
(coming in a later patch) which injects #line directives into the
source .patch to preserve the original line numbers at compile time.
Note the end result of this subcommand is not yet functionally complete.
Livepatch needs some ELF magic which linkers don't like:
- Two relocation sections (.rela*, .klp.rela*) for the same text
section.
- Use of SHN_LIVEPATCH to mark livepatch symbols.
Unfortunately linkers tend to mangle such things. To work around that,
klp diff generates a linker-compliant intermediate binary which encodes
the relevant KLP section/reloc/symbol metadata.
After module linking, a klp post-link step (coming soon) will clean up
the mess and convert the linked .ko into a fully compliant livepatch
module.
Note this subcommand requires the diffed binaries to have been compiled
with -ffunction-sections and -fdata-sections, and processed with
'objtool --checksum'. Those constraints will be handled by a klp-build
script introduced in a later patch.
Without '-ffunction-sections -fdata-sections', reliable object diffing
would be infeasible due to toolchain limitations:
- For intra-file+intra-section references, the compiler might
occasionally generated hard-coded instruction offsets instead of
relocations.
- Section-symbol-based references can be ambiguous:
- Overlapping or zero-length symbols create ambiguity as to which
symbol is being referenced.
- A reference to the end of a symbol (e.g., checking array bounds)
can be misinterpreted as a reference to the next symbol, or vice
versa.
A potential future alternative to '-ffunction-sections -fdata-sections'
would be to introduce a toolchain option that forces symbol-based
(non-section) relocations.
Acked-by: Petr Mladek <pmladek@suse.com>
Tested-by: Joe Lawrence <joe.lawrence@redhat.com>
Signed-off-by: Josh Poimboeuf <jpoimboe@kernel.org>
2025-09-17 09:03:59 -07:00
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2026-02-10 13:50:10 -08:00
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2026-02-10 13:50:11 -08:00
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2026-02-10 13:50:10 -08:00
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objtool/klp: Introduce klp diff subcommand for diffing object files
Add a new klp diff subcommand which performs a binary diff between two
object files and extracts changed functions into a new object which can
then be linked into a livepatch module.
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
(coming in a later patch) which injects #line directives into the
source .patch to preserve the original line numbers at compile time.
Note the end result of this subcommand is not yet functionally complete.
Livepatch needs some ELF magic which linkers don't like:
- Two relocation sections (.rela*, .klp.rela*) for the same text
section.
- Use of SHN_LIVEPATCH to mark livepatch symbols.
Unfortunately linkers tend to mangle such things. To work around that,
klp diff generates a linker-compliant intermediate binary which encodes
the relevant KLP section/reloc/symbol metadata.
After module linking, a klp post-link step (coming soon) will clean up
the mess and convert the linked .ko into a fully compliant livepatch
module.
Note this subcommand requires the diffed binaries to have been compiled
with -ffunction-sections and -fdata-sections, and processed with
'objtool --checksum'. Those constraints will be handled by a klp-build
script introduced in a later patch.
Without '-ffunction-sections -fdata-sections', reliable object diffing
would be infeasible due to toolchain limitations:
- For intra-file+intra-section references, the compiler might
occasionally generated hard-coded instruction offsets instead of
relocations.
- Section-symbol-based references can be ambiguous:
- Overlapping or zero-length symbols create ambiguity as to which
symbol is being referenced.
- A reference to the end of a symbol (e.g., checking array bounds)
can be misinterpreted as a reference to the next symbol, or vice
versa.
A potential future alternative to '-ffunction-sections -fdata-sections'
would be to introduce a toolchain option that forces symbol-based
(non-section) relocations.
Acked-by: Petr Mladek <pmladek@suse.com>
Tested-by: Joe Lawrence <joe.lawrence@redhat.com>
Signed-off-by: Josh Poimboeuf <jpoimboe@kernel.org>
2025-09-17 09:03:59 -07:00
|
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|
2026-02-10 13:50:11 -08:00
|
|
|
|
objtool/klp: Introduce klp diff subcommand for diffing object files
Add a new klp diff subcommand which performs a binary diff between two
object files and extracts changed functions into a new object which can
then be linked into a livepatch module.
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
(coming in a later patch) which injects #line directives into the
source .patch to preserve the original line numbers at compile time.
Note the end result of this subcommand is not yet functionally complete.
Livepatch needs some ELF magic which linkers don't like:
- Two relocation sections (.rela*, .klp.rela*) for the same text
section.
- Use of SHN_LIVEPATCH to mark livepatch symbols.
Unfortunately linkers tend to mangle such things. To work around that,
klp diff generates a linker-compliant intermediate binary which encodes
the relevant KLP section/reloc/symbol metadata.
After module linking, a klp post-link step (coming soon) will clean up
the mess and convert the linked .ko into a fully compliant livepatch
module.
Note this subcommand requires the diffed binaries to have been compiled
with -ffunction-sections and -fdata-sections, and processed with
'objtool --checksum'. Those constraints will be handled by a klp-build
script introduced in a later patch.
Without '-ffunction-sections -fdata-sections', reliable object diffing
would be infeasible due to toolchain limitations:
- For intra-file+intra-section references, the compiler might
occasionally generated hard-coded instruction offsets instead of
relocations.
- Section-symbol-based references can be ambiguous:
- Overlapping or zero-length symbols create ambiguity as to which
symbol is being referenced.
- A reference to the end of a symbol (e.g., checking array bounds)
can be misinterpreted as a reference to the next symbol, or vice
versa.
A potential future alternative to '-ffunction-sections -fdata-sections'
would be to introduce a toolchain option that forces symbol-based
(non-section) relocations.
Acked-by: Petr Mladek <pmladek@suse.com>
Tested-by: Joe Lawrence <joe.lawrence@redhat.com>
Signed-off-by: Josh Poimboeuf <jpoimboe@kernel.org>
2025-09-17 09:03:59 -07:00
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2026-02-10 13:50:11 -08:00
|
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|
objtool/klp: Introduce klp diff subcommand for diffing object files
Add a new klp diff subcommand which performs a binary diff between two
object files and extracts changed functions into a new object which can
then be linked into a livepatch module.
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
(coming in a later patch) which injects #line directives into the
source .patch to preserve the original line numbers at compile time.
Note the end result of this subcommand is not yet functionally complete.
Livepatch needs some ELF magic which linkers don't like:
- Two relocation sections (.rela*, .klp.rela*) for the same text
section.
- Use of SHN_LIVEPATCH to mark livepatch symbols.
Unfortunately linkers tend to mangle such things. To work around that,
klp diff generates a linker-compliant intermediate binary which encodes
the relevant KLP section/reloc/symbol metadata.
After module linking, a klp post-link step (coming soon) will clean up
the mess and convert the linked .ko into a fully compliant livepatch
module.
Note this subcommand requires the diffed binaries to have been compiled
with -ffunction-sections and -fdata-sections, and processed with
'objtool --checksum'. Those constraints will be handled by a klp-build
script introduced in a later patch.
Without '-ffunction-sections -fdata-sections', reliable object diffing
would be infeasible due to toolchain limitations:
- For intra-file+intra-section references, the compiler might
occasionally generated hard-coded instruction offsets instead of
relocations.
- Section-symbol-based references can be ambiguous:
- Overlapping or zero-length symbols create ambiguity as to which
symbol is being referenced.
- A reference to the end of a symbol (e.g., checking array bounds)
can be misinterpreted as a reference to the next symbol, or vice
versa.
A potential future alternative to '-ffunction-sections -fdata-sections'
would be to introduce a toolchain option that forces symbol-based
(non-section) relocations.
Acked-by: Petr Mladek <pmladek@suse.com>
Tested-by: Joe Lawrence <joe.lawrence@redhat.com>
Signed-off-by: Josh Poimboeuf <jpoimboe@kernel.org>
2025-09-17 09:03:59 -07:00
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2026-04-03 14:53:32 -07:00
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objtool/klp: Introduce klp diff subcommand for diffing object files
Add a new klp diff subcommand which performs a binary diff between two
object files and extracts changed functions into a new object which can
then be linked into a livepatch module.
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
(coming in a later patch) which injects #line directives into the
source .patch to preserve the original line numbers at compile time.
Note the end result of this subcommand is not yet functionally complete.
Livepatch needs some ELF magic which linkers don't like:
- Two relocation sections (.rela*, .klp.rela*) for the same text
section.
- Use of SHN_LIVEPATCH to mark livepatch symbols.
Unfortunately linkers tend to mangle such things. To work around that,
klp diff generates a linker-compliant intermediate binary which encodes
the relevant KLP section/reloc/symbol metadata.
After module linking, a klp post-link step (coming soon) will clean up
the mess and convert the linked .ko into a fully compliant livepatch
module.
Note this subcommand requires the diffed binaries to have been compiled
with -ffunction-sections and -fdata-sections, and processed with
'objtool --checksum'. Those constraints will be handled by a klp-build
script introduced in a later patch.
Without '-ffunction-sections -fdata-sections', reliable object diffing
would be infeasible due to toolchain limitations:
- For intra-file+intra-section references, the compiler might
occasionally generated hard-coded instruction offsets instead of
relocations.
- Section-symbol-based references can be ambiguous:
- Overlapping or zero-length symbols create ambiguity as to which
symbol is being referenced.
- A reference to the end of a symbol (e.g., checking array bounds)
can be misinterpreted as a reference to the next symbol, or vice
versa.
A potential future alternative to '-ffunction-sections -fdata-sections'
would be to introduce a toolchain option that forces symbol-based
(non-section) relocations.
Acked-by: Petr Mladek <pmladek@suse.com>
Tested-by: Joe Lawrence <joe.lawrence@redhat.com>
Signed-off-by: Josh Poimboeuf <jpoimboe@kernel.org>
2025-09-17 09:03:59 -07:00
|
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|
2026-04-03 14:53:32 -07:00
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|
objtool/klp: Introduce klp diff subcommand for diffing object files
Add a new klp diff subcommand which performs a binary diff between two
object files and extracts changed functions into a new object which can
then be linked into a livepatch module.
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
(coming in a later patch) which injects #line directives into the
source .patch to preserve the original line numbers at compile time.
Note the end result of this subcommand is not yet functionally complete.
Livepatch needs some ELF magic which linkers don't like:
- Two relocation sections (.rela*, .klp.rela*) for the same text
section.
- Use of SHN_LIVEPATCH to mark livepatch symbols.
Unfortunately linkers tend to mangle such things. To work around that,
klp diff generates a linker-compliant intermediate binary which encodes
the relevant KLP section/reloc/symbol metadata.
After module linking, a klp post-link step (coming soon) will clean up
the mess and convert the linked .ko into a fully compliant livepatch
module.
Note this subcommand requires the diffed binaries to have been compiled
with -ffunction-sections and -fdata-sections, and processed with
'objtool --checksum'. Those constraints will be handled by a klp-build
script introduced in a later patch.
Without '-ffunction-sections -fdata-sections', reliable object diffing
would be infeasible due to toolchain limitations:
- For intra-file+intra-section references, the compiler might
occasionally generated hard-coded instruction offsets instead of
relocations.
- Section-symbol-based references can be ambiguous:
- Overlapping or zero-length symbols create ambiguity as to which
symbol is being referenced.
- A reference to the end of a symbol (e.g., checking array bounds)
can be misinterpreted as a reference to the next symbol, or vice
versa.
A potential future alternative to '-ffunction-sections -fdata-sections'
would be to introduce a toolchain option that forces symbol-based
(non-section) relocations.
Acked-by: Petr Mladek <pmladek@suse.com>
Tested-by: Joe Lawrence <joe.lawrence@redhat.com>
Signed-off-by: Josh Poimboeuf <jpoimboe@kernel.org>
2025-09-17 09:03:59 -07:00
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2026-04-03 14:53:32 -07:00
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objtool/klp: Introduce klp diff subcommand for diffing object files
Add a new klp diff subcommand which performs a binary diff between two
object files and extracts changed functions into a new object which can
then be linked into a livepatch module.
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
(coming in a later patch) which injects #line directives into the
source .patch to preserve the original line numbers at compile time.
Note the end result of this subcommand is not yet functionally complete.
Livepatch needs some ELF magic which linkers don't like:
- Two relocation sections (.rela*, .klp.rela*) for the same text
section.
- Use of SHN_LIVEPATCH to mark livepatch symbols.
Unfortunately linkers tend to mangle such things. To work around that,
klp diff generates a linker-compliant intermediate binary which encodes
the relevant KLP section/reloc/symbol metadata.
After module linking, a klp post-link step (coming soon) will clean up
the mess and convert the linked .ko into a fully compliant livepatch
module.
Note this subcommand requires the diffed binaries to have been compiled
with -ffunction-sections and -fdata-sections, and processed with
'objtool --checksum'. Those constraints will be handled by a klp-build
script introduced in a later patch.
Without '-ffunction-sections -fdata-sections', reliable object diffing
would be infeasible due to toolchain limitations:
- For intra-file+intra-section references, the compiler might
occasionally generated hard-coded instruction offsets instead of
relocations.
- Section-symbol-based references can be ambiguous:
- Overlapping or zero-length symbols create ambiguity as to which
symbol is being referenced.
- A reference to the end of a symbol (e.g., checking array bounds)
can be misinterpreted as a reference to the next symbol, or vice
versa.
A potential future alternative to '-ffunction-sections -fdata-sections'
would be to introduce a toolchain option that forces symbol-based
(non-section) relocations.
Acked-by: Petr Mladek <pmladek@suse.com>
Tested-by: Joe Lawrence <joe.lawrence@redhat.com>
Signed-off-by: Josh Poimboeuf <jpoimboe@kernel.org>
2025-09-17 09:03:59 -07:00
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2026-01-23 11:26:57 +01:00
|
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|
|
objtool/klp: Introduce klp diff subcommand for diffing object files
Add a new klp diff subcommand which performs a binary diff between two
object files and extracts changed functions into a new object which can
then be linked into a livepatch module.
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
(coming in a later patch) which injects #line directives into the
source .patch to preserve the original line numbers at compile time.
Note the end result of this subcommand is not yet functionally complete.
Livepatch needs some ELF magic which linkers don't like:
- Two relocation sections (.rela*, .klp.rela*) for the same text
section.
- Use of SHN_LIVEPATCH to mark livepatch symbols.
Unfortunately linkers tend to mangle such things. To work around that,
klp diff generates a linker-compliant intermediate binary which encodes
the relevant KLP section/reloc/symbol metadata.
After module linking, a klp post-link step (coming soon) will clean up
the mess and convert the linked .ko into a fully compliant livepatch
module.
Note this subcommand requires the diffed binaries to have been compiled
with -ffunction-sections and -fdata-sections, and processed with
'objtool --checksum'. Those constraints will be handled by a klp-build
script introduced in a later patch.
Without '-ffunction-sections -fdata-sections', reliable object diffing
would be infeasible due to toolchain limitations:
- For intra-file+intra-section references, the compiler might
occasionally generated hard-coded instruction offsets instead of
relocations.
- Section-symbol-based references can be ambiguous:
- Overlapping or zero-length symbols create ambiguity as to which
symbol is being referenced.
- A reference to the end of a symbol (e.g., checking array bounds)
can be misinterpreted as a reference to the next symbol, or vice
versa.
A potential future alternative to '-ffunction-sections -fdata-sections'
would be to introduce a toolchain option that forces symbol-based
(non-section) relocations.
Acked-by: Petr Mladek <pmladek@suse.com>
Tested-by: Joe Lawrence <joe.lawrence@redhat.com>
Signed-off-by: Josh Poimboeuf <jpoimboe@kernel.org>
2025-09-17 09:03:59 -07:00
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2026-03-18 15:33:58 -07:00
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objtool/klp: Introduce klp diff subcommand for diffing object files
Add a new klp diff subcommand which performs a binary diff between two
object files and extracts changed functions into a new object which can
then be linked into a livepatch module.
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
(coming in a later patch) which injects #line directives into the
source .patch to preserve the original line numbers at compile time.
Note the end result of this subcommand is not yet functionally complete.
Livepatch needs some ELF magic which linkers don't like:
- Two relocation sections (.rela*, .klp.rela*) for the same text
section.
- Use of SHN_LIVEPATCH to mark livepatch symbols.
Unfortunately linkers tend to mangle such things. To work around that,
klp diff generates a linker-compliant intermediate binary which encodes
the relevant KLP section/reloc/symbol metadata.
After module linking, a klp post-link step (coming soon) will clean up
the mess and convert the linked .ko into a fully compliant livepatch
module.
Note this subcommand requires the diffed binaries to have been compiled
with -ffunction-sections and -fdata-sections, and processed with
'objtool --checksum'. Those constraints will be handled by a klp-build
script introduced in a later patch.
Without '-ffunction-sections -fdata-sections', reliable object diffing
would be infeasible due to toolchain limitations:
- For intra-file+intra-section references, the compiler might
occasionally generated hard-coded instruction offsets instead of
relocations.
- Section-symbol-based references can be ambiguous:
- Overlapping or zero-length symbols create ambiguity as to which
symbol is being referenced.
- A reference to the end of a symbol (e.g., checking array bounds)
can be misinterpreted as a reference to the next symbol, or vice
versa.
A potential future alternative to '-ffunction-sections -fdata-sections'
would be to introduce a toolchain option that forces symbol-based
(non-section) relocations.
Acked-by: Petr Mladek <pmladek@suse.com>
Tested-by: Joe Lawrence <joe.lawrence@redhat.com>
Signed-off-by: Josh Poimboeuf <jpoimboe@kernel.org>
2025-09-17 09:03:59 -07:00
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2026-08-02 20:24:28 -07:00
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|
objtool/klp: Introduce klp diff subcommand for diffing object files
Add a new klp diff subcommand which performs a binary diff between two
object files and extracts changed functions into a new object which can
then be linked into a livepatch module.
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
(coming in a later patch) which injects #line directives into the
source .patch to preserve the original line numbers at compile time.
Note the end result of this subcommand is not yet functionally complete.
Livepatch needs some ELF magic which linkers don't like:
- Two relocation sections (.rela*, .klp.rela*) for the same text
section.
- Use of SHN_LIVEPATCH to mark livepatch symbols.
Unfortunately linkers tend to mangle such things. To work around that,
klp diff generates a linker-compliant intermediate binary which encodes
the relevant KLP section/reloc/symbol metadata.
After module linking, a klp post-link step (coming soon) will clean up
the mess and convert the linked .ko into a fully compliant livepatch
module.
Note this subcommand requires the diffed binaries to have been compiled
with -ffunction-sections and -fdata-sections, and processed with
'objtool --checksum'. Those constraints will be handled by a klp-build
script introduced in a later patch.
Without '-ffunction-sections -fdata-sections', reliable object diffing
would be infeasible due to toolchain limitations:
- For intra-file+intra-section references, the compiler might
occasionally generated hard-coded instruction offsets instead of
relocations.
- Section-symbol-based references can be ambiguous:
- Overlapping or zero-length symbols create ambiguity as to which
symbol is being referenced.
- A reference to the end of a symbol (e.g., checking array bounds)
can be misinterpreted as a reference to the next symbol, or vice
versa.
A potential future alternative to '-ffunction-sections -fdata-sections'
would be to introduce a toolchain option that forces symbol-based
(non-section) relocations.
Acked-by: Petr Mladek <pmladek@suse.com>
Tested-by: Joe Lawrence <joe.lawrence@redhat.com>
Signed-off-by: Josh Poimboeuf <jpoimboe@kernel.org>
2025-09-17 09:03:59 -07:00
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objtool/klp: Rewrite symbol correlation algorithm
Rewrite the symbol correlation code, using a tiered list of
deterministic strategies in a loop. For duplicately named symbols, each
tier applies a filter with the goal of finding a 1:1 deterministic
correlation between the original and patched version of the symbol.
The three matching strategies are:
find_twin(): A funnel of progressively tighter filters. Candidates
with the same demangled name are counted at four levels: name, scope
(local-vs-global), file (strict file association), and checksum
(unchanged functions). The widest level that yields a 1:1 match wins,
narrower levels are only tried when the wider level is ambiguous.
find_twin_suffixed(): Uses already-correlated LLVM symbol pairs to map
.llvm.<hash> suffixes from orig to patched. Because all promoted
symbols from the same TU share the same hash, one correlated pair
seeds the mapping for the entire TU.
find_twin_positional(): Last resort, matches symbols by position among
same-named candidates, similar to livepatch sympos. Used for data
objects like __quirk variables where no deterministic filter can
distinguish the candidates.
Overall this works much better than the existing algorithm, particularly
with LTO kernels.
Acked-by: Song Liu <song@kernel.org>
Signed-off-by: Josh Poimboeuf <jpoimboe@kernel.org>
2026-04-09 20:51:27 -07:00
|
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|
|
objtool/klp: Introduce klp diff subcommand for diffing object files
Add a new klp diff subcommand which performs a binary diff between two
object files and extracts changed functions into a new object which can
then be linked into a livepatch module.
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
(coming in a later patch) which injects #line directives into the
source .patch to preserve the original line numbers at compile time.
Note the end result of this subcommand is not yet functionally complete.
Livepatch needs some ELF magic which linkers don't like:
- Two relocation sections (.rela*, .klp.rela*) for the same text
section.
- Use of SHN_LIVEPATCH to mark livepatch symbols.
Unfortunately linkers tend to mangle such things. To work around that,
klp diff generates a linker-compliant intermediate binary which encodes
the relevant KLP section/reloc/symbol metadata.
After module linking, a klp post-link step (coming soon) will clean up
the mess and convert the linked .ko into a fully compliant livepatch
module.
Note this subcommand requires the diffed binaries to have been compiled
with -ffunction-sections and -fdata-sections, and processed with
'objtool --checksum'. Those constraints will be handled by a klp-build
script introduced in a later patch.
Without '-ffunction-sections -fdata-sections', reliable object diffing
would be infeasible due to toolchain limitations:
- For intra-file+intra-section references, the compiler might
occasionally generated hard-coded instruction offsets instead of
relocations.
- Section-symbol-based references can be ambiguous:
- Overlapping or zero-length symbols create ambiguity as to which
symbol is being referenced.
- A reference to the end of a symbol (e.g., checking array bounds)
can be misinterpreted as a reference to the next symbol, or vice
versa.
A potential future alternative to '-ffunction-sections -fdata-sections'
would be to introduce a toolchain option that forces symbol-based
(non-section) relocations.
Acked-by: Petr Mladek <pmladek@suse.com>
Tested-by: Joe Lawrence <joe.lawrence@redhat.com>
Signed-off-by: Josh Poimboeuf <jpoimboe@kernel.org>
2025-09-17 09:03:59 -07:00
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2026-04-20 22:58:37 -07:00
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objtool/klp: Introduce klp diff subcommand for diffing object files
Add a new klp diff subcommand which performs a binary diff between two
object files and extracts changed functions into a new object which can
then be linked into a livepatch module.
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
(coming in a later patch) which injects #line directives into the
source .patch to preserve the original line numbers at compile time.
Note the end result of this subcommand is not yet functionally complete.
Livepatch needs some ELF magic which linkers don't like:
- Two relocation sections (.rela*, .klp.rela*) for the same text
section.
- Use of SHN_LIVEPATCH to mark livepatch symbols.
Unfortunately linkers tend to mangle such things. To work around that,
klp diff generates a linker-compliant intermediate binary which encodes
the relevant KLP section/reloc/symbol metadata.
After module linking, a klp post-link step (coming soon) will clean up
the mess and convert the linked .ko into a fully compliant livepatch
module.
Note this subcommand requires the diffed binaries to have been compiled
with -ffunction-sections and -fdata-sections, and processed with
'objtool --checksum'. Those constraints will be handled by a klp-build
script introduced in a later patch.
Without '-ffunction-sections -fdata-sections', reliable object diffing
would be infeasible due to toolchain limitations:
- For intra-file+intra-section references, the compiler might
occasionally generated hard-coded instruction offsets instead of
relocations.
- Section-symbol-based references can be ambiguous:
- Overlapping or zero-length symbols create ambiguity as to which
symbol is being referenced.
- A reference to the end of a symbol (e.g., checking array bounds)
can be misinterpreted as a reference to the next symbol, or vice
versa.
A potential future alternative to '-ffunction-sections -fdata-sections'
would be to introduce a toolchain option that forces symbol-based
(non-section) relocations.
Acked-by: Petr Mladek <pmladek@suse.com>
Tested-by: Joe Lawrence <joe.lawrence@redhat.com>
Signed-off-by: Josh Poimboeuf <jpoimboe@kernel.org>
2025-09-17 09:03:59 -07:00
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2026-08-02 20:24:28 -07:00
|
|
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|
objtool/klp: Introduce klp diff subcommand for diffing object files
Add a new klp diff subcommand which performs a binary diff between two
object files and extracts changed functions into a new object which can
then be linked into a livepatch module.
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
(coming in a later patch) which injects #line directives into the
source .patch to preserve the original line numbers at compile time.
Note the end result of this subcommand is not yet functionally complete.
Livepatch needs some ELF magic which linkers don't like:
- Two relocation sections (.rela*, .klp.rela*) for the same text
section.
- Use of SHN_LIVEPATCH to mark livepatch symbols.
Unfortunately linkers tend to mangle such things. To work around that,
klp diff generates a linker-compliant intermediate binary which encodes
the relevant KLP section/reloc/symbol metadata.
After module linking, a klp post-link step (coming soon) will clean up
the mess and convert the linked .ko into a fully compliant livepatch
module.
Note this subcommand requires the diffed binaries to have been compiled
with -ffunction-sections and -fdata-sections, and processed with
'objtool --checksum'. Those constraints will be handled by a klp-build
script introduced in a later patch.
Without '-ffunction-sections -fdata-sections', reliable object diffing
would be infeasible due to toolchain limitations:
- For intra-file+intra-section references, the compiler might
occasionally generated hard-coded instruction offsets instead of
relocations.
- Section-symbol-based references can be ambiguous:
- Overlapping or zero-length symbols create ambiguity as to which
symbol is being referenced.
- A reference to the end of a symbol (e.g., checking array bounds)
can be misinterpreted as a reference to the next symbol, or vice
versa.
A potential future alternative to '-ffunction-sections -fdata-sections'
would be to introduce a toolchain option that forces symbol-based
(non-section) relocations.
Acked-by: Petr Mladek <pmladek@suse.com>
Tested-by: Joe Lawrence <joe.lawrence@redhat.com>
Signed-off-by: Josh Poimboeuf <jpoimboe@kernel.org>
2025-09-17 09:03:59 -07:00
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objtool/klp: Rewrite symbol correlation algorithm
Rewrite the symbol correlation code, using a tiered list of
deterministic strategies in a loop. For duplicately named symbols, each
tier applies a filter with the goal of finding a 1:1 deterministic
correlation between the original and patched version of the symbol.
The three matching strategies are:
find_twin(): A funnel of progressively tighter filters. Candidates
with the same demangled name are counted at four levels: name, scope
(local-vs-global), file (strict file association), and checksum
(unchanged functions). The widest level that yields a 1:1 match wins,
narrower levels are only tried when the wider level is ambiguous.
find_twin_suffixed(): Uses already-correlated LLVM symbol pairs to map
.llvm.<hash> suffixes from orig to patched. Because all promoted
symbols from the same TU share the same hash, one correlated pair
seeds the mapping for the entire TU.
find_twin_positional(): Last resort, matches symbols by position among
same-named candidates, similar to livepatch sympos. Used for data
objects like __quirk variables where no deterministic filter can
distinguish the candidates.
Overall this works much better than the existing algorithm, particularly
with LTO kernels.
Acked-by: Song Liu <song@kernel.org>
Signed-off-by: Josh Poimboeuf <jpoimboe@kernel.org>
2026-04-09 20:51:27 -07:00
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objtool/klp: Introduce klp diff subcommand for diffing object files
Add a new klp diff subcommand which performs a binary diff between two
object files and extracts changed functions into a new object which can
then be linked into a livepatch module.
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
(coming in a later patch) which injects #line directives into the
source .patch to preserve the original line numbers at compile time.
Note the end result of this subcommand is not yet functionally complete.
Livepatch needs some ELF magic which linkers don't like:
- Two relocation sections (.rela*, .klp.rela*) for the same text
section.
- Use of SHN_LIVEPATCH to mark livepatch symbols.
Unfortunately linkers tend to mangle such things. To work around that,
klp diff generates a linker-compliant intermediate binary which encodes
the relevant KLP section/reloc/symbol metadata.
After module linking, a klp post-link step (coming soon) will clean up
the mess and convert the linked .ko into a fully compliant livepatch
module.
Note this subcommand requires the diffed binaries to have been compiled
with -ffunction-sections and -fdata-sections, and processed with
'objtool --checksum'. Those constraints will be handled by a klp-build
script introduced in a later patch.
Without '-ffunction-sections -fdata-sections', reliable object diffing
would be infeasible due to toolchain limitations:
- For intra-file+intra-section references, the compiler might
occasionally generated hard-coded instruction offsets instead of
relocations.
- Section-symbol-based references can be ambiguous:
- Overlapping or zero-length symbols create ambiguity as to which
symbol is being referenced.
- A reference to the end of a symbol (e.g., checking array bounds)
can be misinterpreted as a reference to the next symbol, or vice
versa.
A potential future alternative to '-ffunction-sections -fdata-sections'
would be to introduce a toolchain option that forces symbol-based
(non-section) relocations.
Acked-by: Petr Mladek <pmladek@suse.com>
Tested-by: Joe Lawrence <joe.lawrence@redhat.com>
Signed-off-by: Josh Poimboeuf <jpoimboe@kernel.org>
2025-09-17 09:03:59 -07:00
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2026-01-25 21:56:39 -08:00
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objtool/klp: Introduce klp diff subcommand for diffing object files
Add a new klp diff subcommand which performs a binary diff between two
object files and extracts changed functions into a new object which can
then be linked into a livepatch module.
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
(coming in a later patch) which injects #line directives into the
source .patch to preserve the original line numbers at compile time.
Note the end result of this subcommand is not yet functionally complete.
Livepatch needs some ELF magic which linkers don't like:
- Two relocation sections (.rela*, .klp.rela*) for the same text
section.
- Use of SHN_LIVEPATCH to mark livepatch symbols.
Unfortunately linkers tend to mangle such things. To work around that,
klp diff generates a linker-compliant intermediate binary which encodes
the relevant KLP section/reloc/symbol metadata.
After module linking, a klp post-link step (coming soon) will clean up
the mess and convert the linked .ko into a fully compliant livepatch
module.
Note this subcommand requires the diffed binaries to have been compiled
with -ffunction-sections and -fdata-sections, and processed with
'objtool --checksum'. Those constraints will be handled by a klp-build
script introduced in a later patch.
Without '-ffunction-sections -fdata-sections', reliable object diffing
would be infeasible due to toolchain limitations:
- For intra-file+intra-section references, the compiler might
occasionally generated hard-coded instruction offsets instead of
relocations.
- Section-symbol-based references can be ambiguous:
- Overlapping or zero-length symbols create ambiguity as to which
symbol is being referenced.
- A reference to the end of a symbol (e.g., checking array bounds)
can be misinterpreted as a reference to the next symbol, or vice
versa.
A potential future alternative to '-ffunction-sections -fdata-sections'
would be to introduce a toolchain option that forces symbol-based
(non-section) relocations.
Acked-by: Petr Mladek <pmladek@suse.com>
Tested-by: Joe Lawrence <joe.lawrence@redhat.com>
Signed-off-by: Josh Poimboeuf <jpoimboe@kernel.org>
2025-09-17 09:03:59 -07:00
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