Instead of a single source of symbols, now linker keeps a list of DSO (former Library) objects
with their own symbols map. That helps to process R_X86_64_COPY relocations correctly.
For example, if 'a.out' executable with dependencies ['libstdc++.so', 'libc.so'] is being loaded
and 'a.out' uses 'stdout' symbol from 'libc.so', its relocation process goes as follows:
- linker processes relocation entry 'stdout' of type R_X86_64_GLOB_DAT from 'libc.so',
- it goes through object list ['a.out', 'libstdc++.so', 'libc.so'] to find first object
that exports 'stdout' symbol. The symbol is in 'a.out' with the value e.g. '0x404070',
- linker sets 'stdout' symbol GOT entry in 'libc.so' to '0x404070',
....
- linker processes relocation entry 'stdout' of type R_X86_64_COPY from 'a.out',
- it goes through object list excluding 'a.out': ['libstdc++.so', 'libc.so']. The symbol is found in 'libc.so',
- linker copies the 'stdout' symbol content from 'libc.so' to memory at address '0x404070' (in 'a.out' object).
Objects are relocated in reverse order they were loaded. So in the example above, linker starts with relocating
'libc.so' and ends with 'a.out'. It is necessary e.g. when linking with 'libstdc++.so' - there are many
relocations which symbols are found in 'libstdc++.so', so they need to be resolved before their contents are
copied to 'a.out'. That also matches GNU ld.so behavior.
It seams that stdout of ld.so is not that much of an issue but actually
it unfortunately is. The major problem here is that sometimes programs
generate header files in stdout (./getmy_custom_headers > header.h) and
we need to keep that cleen. and this is very very popular in gcc.
It is fact that ld.so has libc statially linked into it.
Normally we wouldn't need ld.so functionality once the program is
finalyl loaded, but with the next few patches, we will have dlopen which
will reuse the same ld.so functionality.
The problem is that it seams that huge part of the code is possible not
referntially transparent. That is, it is not impossible that some of the
functions have internals states. So when using the struct Linker that is
initialized by ld.so's copy of libc. we must access it using the same
copy even if both copies are identical.
For example in dlopen if you do linker.load_library(..). That would
segfault because it is using the function from libc not ld.so
So I don't truly undestand why should this be needed, but after long
hours of being stuck I thought maybe.. maybe that is the issue and
indeed it turned out to be so.
During early parts of ld.so, errno and other thread local variables are
not yet initialized so we cannot use function (such as unistd::access)
that depends on such thread local variables (errno). For this reason
this patch creates small wrapper around the syscall that doesn't not
touch the errno
Wildan M