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# Elfloader

The elfloader is responsible for preparing the hardware for seL4 on ARM
and RISC-V. It loads the kernel and user image from an embedded CPIO archive,
initialises secondary cores (if SMP is enabled), and sets up an initial set of page
tables for the kernel.

## ARM

On ARM platforms, the elfloader supports being booted in four ways: as a binary image,
as a u-boot uImage, as an ELF file, and as an EFI executable. Each of these methods differs slightly.
It can also provide seL4 with a DTB - either from the bootloader or included in the embedded CPIO archive.

1. (EFI only) Elfloader is entered at `_gnuefi_start` entry point.
2. (EFI only) Elfloader relocates itself
3. Elfloader `_start` is called. This is in `arch-arm/<arch_bitness>/crt0.S`.
4. Elfloader initialises the [driver framework](#driver-framework), which enables UART/printf.
5. Elfloader loads the kernel, user image, and DTB, determining where the kernel needs to be mapped in memory.
6. If the kernel window overlaps the elfloader's code:
    * (AArch32 EFI only) the elfloader relocates itself.
     See `relocate_below_kernel` for a detailed explanation of the relocation logic.
    * (Other platforms) the elfloader aborts.
7. The elfloader resumes booting. If it relocated itself, it will re-initialise the driver model.
8. If the elfloader is in HYP mode but seL4 is not configured to support HYP, it will leave HYP mode.
9. The elfloader sets up the initial page tables for the kernel (see `init_hyp_boot_vspace` or `init_boot_vspace`).
10. If SMP is enabled, the elfloader boots all secondary cores.
11. The elfloader enables the MMU.
12. The elfloader launches seL4, passing information about the user image and the DTB.

### Binary

The elfloader expects to be executed with a base address as generated by the `shoehorn` utility.
You can determine the correct address for a given image by running
```
aarch64-linux-gnu-objdump -t elfloader/elfloader | grep _text
```
from the kernel build directory. The first field in the output contains the base address.

On aarch64, the elfloader will try and move itself to the right address, however, this will fail
if the load address and the correct address are too close, as the relocation code will be overwritten.

It is also possible to override `shoehorn` and hardcode a load address by setting IMAGE_START_ADDR in CMake.

### U-Boot

The elfloader can be booted according to the Linux kernel's booting convention for ARM/ARM64.
The DTB, if provided, will be passed to seL4 (which will then pass it to the root task).

### ELF

The elfloader supports being executed as an ELF image (via `bootelf` in U-Boot or similar).

### EFI

The elfloader integrates EFI support based on the `gnu-efi` project. It will relocate itself as appropriate,
and supports loading a DTB from the EFI implementation.

## RISC-V

On RISC-V the elfloader is launched by the `bbl`, which is integrated in the seL4 build system.
The `bbl` brings up secondary cores, and the elfloader uses SBI to provide a serial output on RISC-V.

## Driver framework

The elfloader provides a driver framework to reduce code duplication between platforms.
Currently the driver framework is only used for UART output, however it is designed with extensibility in mind.
In practice, this is currently only used on ARM, as RISC-V uses SBI for UART, and SBI has no device tree entries.
However, in the future it may become useful on RISC-V.

The driver framework uses a header file containing a list of devices generated by the `hardware_gen.py` utility
included in seL4. Currently, this header only includes the UART specified by the `stdout-path` property in the DTB.
Each device in the list has a compatible string (`compat`), and a list of addresses (`region_bases[]`) which correspond to the regions specified
by the `reg` property in the DTB.

Each driver in the elfloader has a list of compatible strings, matching those found in the device tree.
For instance, the 8250 UART driver, used on Tegra and TI platforms has the following:

```c
static const struct dtb_match_table uart_8250_matches[] = {
    { .compatible = "nvidia,tegra20-uart" },
    { .compatible = "ti,omap3-uart" },
    { .compatible = "snps,dw-apb-uart" },
    { .compatible = NULL /* sentinel */ },
};
```

Each driver also has a 'type'. Currently the only type supported is `DRIVER_UART`. The `type`
indicates the type of struct that is found in the `ops` pointer of each driver object,
and provides type-specific functionality.
(For instance, UART drivers have a `elfloader_uart_ops` struct which contains a `putc` function).
Finally, drivers also provide an `init` function, which is called when the driver is matched with a device,
and can be used to perform device-specific setup (e.g. setting the device as the UART output).

Finally, each driver has a `struct elfloader_driver` and a corresponding `ELFLOADER_DRIVER` statement.
Taking the 8250 UART driver as an example again:

```c
static const struct elfloader_driver uart_8250 = {
    .match_table = uart_8250_matches,
    .type = DRIVER_UART,
    .init = &uart_8250_init,
    .ops = &uart_8250_ops,
};

ELFLOADER_DRIVER(uart_8250);
```

#### UART

The driver framework provides a "default" (`__attribute__((weak))`) implementation of `plat_console_putchar`, which calls
the `putc` function for the elfloader device provided to `uart_set_out` - discarding all characters
that are given to it before `uart_set_out` is called. This can be overridden if you do not wish to use
the driver framework (e.g. for very early debugging).



## Porting the elfloader

### To ARM

Once a kernel port has been started (and a DTB provided), porting the elfloader to a platform is reasonably
straightforward.

Most platform-specific information is extracted from a DTB, including available physical memory ranges. If the
platform uses a UART compatible with another platform, even the UART will work out of the box. In other cases,
it might be necessary to add a new `dtb_match_table` entry to an existing driver, or add a new driver
(which is fairly trivial - only the `match_table` and `putchar` functions from an existing driver would
need to be changed).

An appropriate image type needs to be selected. By default `ElfloaderImage` is set to `elf`, however,
various platform-specific overrides exist and can be found in `ApplyData61ElfLoaderSettings` in this repo, at
`cmake-tool/helpers/application_settings.cmake`.

### To RISC-V

TODO - it seems there's not actually that much that needs to be done on the elfloader side.

Indexes created Sat May 04 09:44:38 MDT 2024