compile u-boot with recent toolchain : symbols problem

Hello,

I used to compile U-Boot with ELDK, but I currently need to work with newer toolchain :
- binutils-2.16
- gcc-3.4.3

The "__u_boot_cmd_start" symbol value, generated with this new toolchain, is wrong (U-Boot crashes when relocating the command table).
There are two new sections between "__u_boot_cmd_start" and ".u_boot_cmd" address :
- .data.rel.local
- .data.rel

I don't know what these (new) sections are, but the problem can be solved in "u-boot.lds" :

-   __u_boot_cmd_start = .;
    .u_boot_cmd : { *(.u_boot_cmd) }
    __u_boot_cmd_end = .;

+ __u_boot_cmd_start = ADDR(.u_boot_cmd);

Best regards, Cedric VINCENT.

This looks line a binutils problem, then. May I ask why you have to use binutils-2.16 ?

And which exact board are we talking about?

Can you please provide exact data, like the differences between the System.map and the u-boot.map files when using binutils-2.16 and another, working version of binutils? [Please use the _same_ version of GCC for this comparison.]

Can you please show exactly what happens?

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We want to test recent toolchain, to see if we should migrate or not (our policy is to keep tools up-to-date, assuming fixes and new features are more important than new bugs).

We're talking about "ADS Virtex-II Pro Development board", I use ML300 port (and some parts of ML2 and MicroBlaze ports).

The problem doesn't appear using binutils-2.16 with GCC provided by ELDK... So it seems to be a GCC problem.

I attached 3 binaries :
- u-boot_ELDK, which is compiled with binutils-2.11.93.0.2 (20020207) and gcc-2.95.4
- u-boot_binutils-2.16, which is compiled with binutils-2.16 and gcc-2.95.4
- u-boot_new_toolchain, which is compiled with binutils-2.16 and gcc-3.4.3

As you can see with this command, "__u_boot_cmd_start" is not at the right place :
bash# powerpc-405-linux-gnu-nm u-boot_new_toolchain | sort [...]
0002ab8c A __u_boot_cmd_start
0002ab8c D init_sequence
0002abb8 d failed
0002abbc D op_table
0002ac24 D stdio_names
0002ac30 d av_
0002b038 D z_errmsg
0002b058 D __u_boot_cmd_autoscr
0002b070 D __u_boot_cmd_bdinfo
0002b088 D __u_boot_cmd_reset
0002b0a0 D __u_boot_cmd_go
[...]

Since U-Boot uses the address of "__u_boot_cmd_start" to point to the first entry of the command table, U-Boot crashes when relocating this table. Here, the address of "__u_boot_cmd_start" should be 0x0002b058.

I noticed that symbol "init_sequence" belongs to section ".data.rel" and symbols "failed", "op_table", "stdio_names", "av_" and "z_errmsg" belong to section ".data.rel.local".

As you can see with this command, these new sections are above the ".u_boot_cmd" section :
bash# powerpc-405-linux-gnu-readelf -S u-boot_new_toolchain [...]

  [ 1] .text             PROGBITS        00010000 000094 016684 00  AX  0   0  4
  [ 2] .resetvec         PROGBITS        00026684 016718 000004 00  AX  0   0  1
  [ 3] .rodata           PROGBITS        00026688 01671c 003500 00   A  0   0  4
  [ 4] .reloc            PROGBITS        00029c00 019c94 000ab8 00  WA  0   0  1
  [ 5] .data             PROGBITS        0002a6b8 01a74c 0004d4 00  WA  0   0  4
  [ 6] .data.rel         PROGBITS        0002ab8c 01ac20 00002c 00  WA  0   0  4
  [ 7] .data.rel.local   PROGBITS        0002abb8 01ac4c 0004a0 00  WA  0   0  4
  [ 8] .u_boot_cmd       PROGBITS        0002b058 01b0ec 000348 00  WA  0   0  4

[...]

So "__u_boot_cmd_start" points to the start of the ".data.rel" section instead of the start of ".u_boot_cmd" section.

These new sections are disassembled in attached files "section_.data.rel.local_dump" and "section_.data.rel_dump".

Thanks.

Best regards, Cedric VINCENT.