Re: [PATCH 0/5] StandaloneMmPkg: make StMM core relocatable

["Ard Biesheuvel" <ard.biesheuvel@arm.com>]

On 6/10/20 10:17 AM, Ard Biesheuvel wrote:
> It is not always possible to deploy the standalone MM core in a way where
> the runtime address is known at build time. This does not matter for most
> modules, since they are relocated at dispatch time. However, for the MM
> core itself, it means we need to do some extra work to relocate the image
> in place if it ends up at a different offset than expected.
> 
> On AARCH64, the standalone MM stack is deployed inside a non-privileged
> secure world container which only has limited control over its memory
> mappings, and so we need to ensure that the executable code itself is
> free of absolute quantities that need to be fixed up. This is very similar
> to how shared libraries are constructed, given that pages can only be
> shared between processes if they are not modified, even by the dynamic
> loader. So we can use this support to emit the standaline MM core in a
> way that guarantees that the executable code does not need to modify
> itself (patch #4)
> 
> Patch #5 adds the actual code to perform the self relocation after the
> .data section has been made writable and non-executable. Note that the
> PE/COFF library code modifies the header in place, and so in the case
> where we need to perform the runtime relocation, we need to remap the
> header page writable and non-executable as well.
> 
> The remaining patches are optimizations and fixes I picked up along
> the way.
> 
> Cc: Michael D Kinney <michael.d.kinney@intel.com>
> Cc: Liming Gao <liming.gao@intel.com>
> Cc: Jiewen Yao <jiewen.yao@intel.com>
> Cc: Sami Mujawar <sami.mujawar@arm.com>
> Cc: Ilias Apalodimas <ilias.apalodimas@linaro.org>
> 

Any thoughts from the StandaloneMmPkg co-maintainers?