The export symbol tables are placed on own sections (__ksymtab*+<sym>) and sorted by SORT (an alias of SORT_BY_NAME) because the module subsystem uses the binary search for symbol resolution.
We did not have a good reason to do so for __ksymtab_strings, but now I have. To make CONFIG_TRIM_UNUSED_KSYMS work in one-pass, the linker needs to trim unused strings of symbols and namespaces. To allow per-symbol keep/drop choice, __ksymtab_strings must be placed on own sections. This keeps the string unification introduced by commit ce2b617ce8cb ("export.h: reduce __ksymtab_strings string duplication by using "MS" section flags"). For example, the empty namespaces share the same address. $ nm -n vmlinux [ snip ] ffffffff8233b6aa r __kstrtabns_IO_APIC_get_PCI_irq_vector ffffffff8233b6aa r __kstrtabns_I_BDEV ffffffff8233b6aa r __kstrtabns_LZ4_decompress_fast ffffffff8233b6aa r __kstrtabns_LZ4_decompress_fast_continue ffffffff8233b6aa r __kstrtabns_LZ4_decompress_fast_usingDict ... I confirmed no size change in vmlinux. Signed-off-by: Masahiro Yamada <masahi...@kernel.org> --- (no changes since v1) include/asm-generic/export.h | 2 +- include/asm-generic/vmlinux.lds.h | 2 +- include/linux/export.h | 2 +- 3 files changed, 3 insertions(+), 3 deletions(-) diff --git a/include/asm-generic/export.h b/include/asm-generic/export.h index 07a36a874dca..e847f1fde367 100644 --- a/include/asm-generic/export.h +++ b/include/asm-generic/export.h @@ -39,7 +39,7 @@ __ksymtab_\name: __put \val, __kstrtab_\name .previous - .section __ksymtab_strings,"aMS",%progbits,1 + .section __ksymtab_strings+\name,"aMS",%progbits,1 __kstrtab_\name: .asciz "\name" .previous diff --git a/include/asm-generic/vmlinux.lds.h b/include/asm-generic/vmlinux.lds.h index 0331d5d49551..6ce6dcabdccf 100644 --- a/include/asm-generic/vmlinux.lds.h +++ b/include/asm-generic/vmlinux.lds.h @@ -513,7 +513,7 @@ \ /* Kernel symbol table: strings */ \ __ksymtab_strings : AT(ADDR(__ksymtab_strings) - LOAD_OFFSET) { \ - *(__ksymtab_strings) \ + *(__ksymtab_strings+*) \ } \ \ /* __*init sections */ \ diff --git a/include/linux/export.h b/include/linux/export.h index 6271a5d9c988..01e6ab19b226 100644 --- a/include/linux/export.h +++ b/include/linux/export.h @@ -99,7 +99,7 @@ struct kernel_symbol { extern const char __kstrtab_##sym[]; \ extern const char __kstrtabns_##sym[]; \ __CRC_SYMBOL(sym, sec); \ - asm(" .section \"__ksymtab_strings\",\"aMS\",%progbits,1 \n" \ + asm(" .section \"__ksymtab_strings+" #sym "\",\"aMS\",%progbits,1\n" \ "__kstrtab_" #sym ": \n" \ " .asciz \"" #sym "\" \n" \ "__kstrtabns_" #sym ": \n" \ -- 2.27.0