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FAILED: Patch "MIPS: Work around LLVM bug when gp is used as global register variable" failed to apply to 5.15-stable tree

PATCH Sasha Levin 1 participant 1 message Mar 1

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Sasha Levin

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The patch below does not apply to the 5.15-stable tree.
If someone wants it applied there, or to any other stable or longterm tree, then please email the backport, including the original git commit id to <[email protected]>.

Thanks,
Sasha

------------------ original commit in Linus's tree ------------------

From 30bfc2d6a1132a89a5f1c3b96c59cf3e4d076ea3 Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001
From: Yao Zi <[email protected]>
Date: Thu, 5 Feb 2026 15:56:44 +0000
Subject: [PATCH] MIPS: Work around LLVM bug when gp is used as global register
variable

On MIPS, __current_thread_info is defined as global register variable locating in $gp, and is simply assigned with new address during kernel relocation.

This however is broken with LLVM, which always restores $gp if it finds $gp is clobbered in any form, including when intentionally through a global register variable. This is against GCC's documentation[1], which requires a callee-saved register used as global register variable not to be restored if it's clobbered.

As a result, $gp will continue to point to the unrelocated kernel after the epilog of relocate_kernel(), leading to an early crash in init_idle,

[    0.000000] CPU 0 Unable to handle kernel paging request at virtual address 0000000000000000, epc == ffffffff81afada8, ra == ffffffff81afad90
[    0.000000] Oops[#1]:
[    0.000000] CPU: 0 UID: 0 PID: 0 Comm: swapper Tainted: G        W           6.19.0-rc5-00262-gd3eeb99bbc99-dirty #188 VOLUNTARY
[    0.000000] Tainted: [W]=WARN
[    0.000000] Hardware name: loongson,loongson64v-4core-virtio
[    0.000000] $ 0   : 0000000000000000 0000000000000000 0000000000000001 0000000000000000
[    0.000000] $ 4   : ffffffff80b80ec0 ffffffff80b53d48 0000000000000000 00000000000f4240
[    0.000000] $ 8   : 0000000000000100 ffffffff81d82f80 ffffffff81d82f80 0000000000000001
[    0.000000] $12   : 0000000000000000 ffffffff81776f58 00000000000005da 0000000000000002
[    0.000000] $16   : ffffffff80b80e40 0000000000000000 ffffffff80b81614 9800000005dfbe80
[    0.000000] $20   : 00000000540000e0 ffffffff81980000 0000000000000000 ffffffff80f81c80
[    0.000000] $24   : 0000000000000a26 ffffffff8114fb90
[    0.000000] $28   : ffffffff80b50000 ffffffff80b53d40 0000000000000000 ffffffff81afad90
[    0.000000] Hi    : 0000000000000000
[    0.000000] Lo    : 0000000000000000
[    0.000000] epc   : ffffffff81afada8 init_idle+0x130/0x270
[    0.000000] ra    : ffffffff81afad90 init_idle+0x118/0x270
[    0.000000] Status: 540000e2	KX SX UX KERNEL EXL
[    0.000000] Cause : 00000008 (ExcCode 02)
[    0.000000] BadVA : 0000000000000000
[    0.000000] PrId  : 00006305 (ICT Loongson-3)
[    0.000000] Process swapper (pid: 0, threadinfo=(____ptrval____), task=(____ptrval____), tls=0000000000000000)
[    0.000000] Stack : 9800000005dfbf00 ffffffff8178e950 0000000000000000 0000000000000000
[    0.000000]         0000000000000000 ffffffff81970000 000000000000003f ffffffff810a6528
[    0.000000]         0000000000000001 9800000005dfbe80 9800000005dfbf00 ffffffff81980000
[    0.000000]         ffffffff810a6450 ffffffff81afb6c0 0000000000000000 ffffffff810a2258
[    0.000000]         ffffffff81d82ec8 ffffffff8198d010 ffffffff81b67e80 ffffffff8197dd98
[    0.000000]         ffffffff81d81c80 ffffffff81930000 0000000000000040 0000000000000000
[    0.000000]         0000000000000000 0000000000000000 0000000000000000 0000000000000000
[    0.000000]         0000000000000000 000000000000009e ffffffff9fc01000 0000000000000000
[    0.000000]         0000000000000000 0000000000000000 0000000000000000 0000000000000000
[    0.000000]         0000000000000000 ffffffff81ae86dc ffffffff81b3c741 0000000000000002
[    0.000000]         ...
[    0.000000] Call Trace:
[    0.000000] [<ffffffff81afada8>] init_idle+0x130/0x270
[    0.000000] [<ffffffff81afb6c0>] sched_init+0x5c8/0x6c0
[    0.000000] [<ffffffff81ae86dc>] start_kernel+0x27c/0x7a8

This bug has been reported to LLVM[2] and affects version from (at least) 18 to 21. Let's work around this by using inline assembly to assign $gp before a fix is widely available.

---
 arch/mips/kernel/relocate.c | 13 +++++++++++++
 1 file changed, 13 insertions(+)
arch/mips/kernel/relocate.c +13 -0
index 7f1c136ad8506..59833210542ff 100644
@@ -420,7 +420,20 @@ void *__init relocate_kernel(void)
 			goto out;
 
 		/* The current thread is now within the relocated image */
+#ifndef CONFIG_CC_IS_CLANG
 		__current_thread_info = RELOCATED(&init_thread_union);
+#else
+		/*
+		 * LLVM may wrongly restore $gp ($28) in epilog even if it's
+		 * intentionally modified. Work around this by using inline
+		 * assembly to assign $gp. $gp couldn't be listed as output or
+		 * clobber, or LLVM will still restore its original value.
+		 * See also LLVM upstream issue
+		 * https://github.com/llvm/llvm-project/issues/176546
+		 */
+		asm volatile("move $28, %0" : :
+			     "r" (RELOCATED(&init_thread_union)));
+#endif
 
 		/* Return the new kernel's entry point */
 		kernel_entry = RELOCATED(start_kernel);
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