amd64 kernels and text address

["Julio M. Merino Vidal" <jmmv84%gmail.com@localhost>]

Hi,

[ Please CC me as I'm not subscribed to this list. ]

I am trying to add Multiboot support to amd64 kernels.  The first  
step in doing so is adding the Multiboot header at the beginning of  
the file (within the first 8KB of the _file_).  Unfortunately, adding  
that as the very first thing in the entry point at locore.S does not  
have the desired effect.

Upon further inspection, I noticed the following in the resulting  
binaries:

Idx Name          Size      VMA               LMA               File  
off  Algn
  0 .text         005c4548  ffffffff80100000  ffffffff80100000   
00100000  2**6
                  CONTENTS, ALLOC, LOAD, READONLY, CODE

Note the offset at which the section is stored in the file:  
0x100000.  Effectively, doing an od -h on the kernel reveals a 1MB  
gap of zeros at the beginning of the file.

I have tried messing with the kern.ldscript and changing the text's  
AT statement to use different values.  If they are >= 0x100000, the  
kernel links and the offset in the file is still 100000.  Using a  
smaller value raises:

ld: kernel: Not enough room for program headers, try linking with -N

On the other hand, if I try to change the value passed to ld in - 
Ttext to something smaller to 0x100000 (say 0x50000), then the  
address correctly changes _and_ the file offset changes too.

Similarly, passing the -N flag lowers the file offsets to much lower  
values.

One other thing I tried was putting the multiboot header in its own  
section, and then making the linker script put that section before  
text.  Which had no effect, because this custom section ended  
after .text but before .data and .bss.

At last, doing this same analysis on an i386 kernel shows:

Idx Name          Size      VMA       LMA       File off  Algn
  0 .text         006d86cc  c0100000  00100000  00001000  2**6
                  CONTENTS, ALLOC, LOAD, READONLY, CODE

As you can see, the file offset is much smaller, and it need not  
match the LMA.

So why oh why, in the amd64 case, .text is forced to be at an offset  
of 0x100000 in the _file_?  It looks like a bug to me.  (Not to  
mention that the LMA is wrong, but that's easy to correct.)

Thanks.