We started to dive into the linux kernel's insides in the previous [part](linux-bootstrap-1.md) and saw the initial part of the kernel setup code. We stopped at the first call to the `main` function (which is the first function written in C) from [arch/x86/boot/main.c](https://github.com/torvalds/linux/blob/v4.16/arch/x86/boot/main.c).
What is [protected mode](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Protected_mode)? Protected mode was first added to the x86 architecture in 1982 and was the main mode of Intel processors from the [80286](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intel_80286) processor until Intel 64 and long mode came.
The main reason to move away from [Real mode](http://wiki.osdev.org/Real_Mode) is that there is very limited access to the RAM. As you may remember from the previous part, there are only 2<sup>20</sup> bytes or 1 Megabyte, sometimes even only 640 Kilobytes of RAM available in the Real mode.
Protected mode brought many changes, but the main one is the difference in memory management. The 20-bit address bus was replaced with a 32-bit address bus. It allowed access to 4 Gigabytes of memory vs the 1 Megabyte in real mode. Also, [paging](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paging) support was added, which you can read about in the next sections.
Memory segmentation was completely redone in protected mode. There are no 64 Kilobyte fixed-size segments. Instead, the size and location of each segment is described by an associated data structure called the _Segment Descriptor_. The segment descriptors are stored in a data structure called the `Global Descriptor Table` (GDT).
The GDT is a structure which resides in memory. It has no fixed place in the memory so, its address is stored in the special `GDTR` register. Later we will see how the GDT is loaded in the Linux kernel code. There will be an operation for loading it into memory, something like:
where the `lgdt` instruction loads the base address and limit(size) of the global descriptor table to the `GDTR` register. `GDTR` is a 48-bit register and consists of two parts:
As mentioned above the GDT contains `segment descriptors` which describe memory segments. Each descriptor is 64-bits in size. The general scheme of a descriptor is:
Don't worry, I know it looks a little scary after real mode, but it's easy. For example LIMIT 15:0 means that bits 0-15 of Limit are located at the beginning of the Descriptor. The rest of it is in LIMIT 19:16, which is located at bits 48-51 of the Descriptor. So, the size of Limit is 0-19 i.e 20-bits. Let's take a closer look at it:
* if G is 1, Limit is interpreted in terms of 4096 Bytes = 4 KBytes = 1 Page and the maximum size of the segment can be 4 Gigabytes. Actually, when G is 1, the value of Limit is shifted to the left by 12 bits. So, 20 bits + 12 bits = 32 bits and 2<sup>32</sup> = 4 Gigabytes.
3. Type/Attribute[5-bits] is represented by bits 40-44. It defines the type of segment and how it can be accessed.
* The `S` flag at bit 44 specifies the descriptor type. If `S` is 0 then this segment is a system segment, whereas if `S` is 1 then this is a code or data segment (Stack segments are data segments which must be read/write segments).
To determine if the segment is a code or data segment, we can check its Ex(bit 43) Attribute (marked as 0 in the above diagram). If it is 0, then the segment is a Data segment, otherwise, it is a code segment.
As we can see the first bit(bit 43) is `0` for a _data_ segment and `1` for a _code_ segment. The next three bits (40, 41, 42) are either `EWA`(*E*xpansion *W*ritable *A*ccessible) or CRA(*C*onforming *R*eadable *A*ccessible).
* if E(bit 42) is 0, expand up, otherwise, expand down. Read more [here](http://www.sudleyplace.com/dpmione/expanddown.html).
* if W(bit 41)(for Data Segments) is 1, write access is allowed, and if it is 0, the segment is read-only. Note that read access is always allowed on data segments.
* A(bit 40) controls whether the segment can be accessed by the processor or not.
* C(bit 43) is the conforming bit(for code selectors). If C is 1, the segment code can be executed from a lower level privilege (e.g. user) level. If C is 0, it can only be executed from the same privilege level.
* R(bit 41) controls read access to code segments; when it is 1, the segment can be read from. Write access is never granted for code segments.
4. DPL[2-bits] (Descriptor Privilege Level) comprises the bits 45-46. It defines the privilege level of the segment. It can be 0-3 where 0 is the most privileged level.
5. The P flag(bit 47) indicates if the segment is present in memory or not. If P is 0, the segment will be presented as _invalid_ and the processor will refuse to read from this segment.
Segment registers contain segment selectors as in real mode. However, in protected mode, a segment selector is handled differently. Each Segment Descriptor has an associated Segment Selector which is a 16-bit structure:
* **Index** stores the index number of the descriptor in the GDT.
* **TI**(Table Indicator) indicates where to search for the descriptor. If it is 0 then the descriptor is searched for in the Global Descriptor Table(GDT). Otherwise, it will be searched for in the Local Descriptor Table(LDT).
* And **RPL** contains the Requester's Privilege Level.
* The segment selector must be loaded in one of the segment registers.
* The CPU tries to find a segment descriptor at the offset `GDT address + Index` from the selector and then loads the descriptor into the *hidden* part of the segment register.
* If paging is disabled, the linear address of the segment, or its physical address, is given by the formula: Base address (found in the descriptor obtained in the previous step) + Offset.
We will see the complete transition to protected mode in the linux kernel in the next part, but before we can move to protected mode, we need to do some more preparations.
Let's look at [arch/x86/boot/main.c](https://github.com/torvalds/linux/blob/v4.16/arch/x86/boot/main.c). We can see some routines there which perform keyboard initialization, heap initialization, etc... Let's take a look.
We will start from the `main` routine in "main.c". The first function which is called in `main` is [`copy_boot_params(void)`](https://github.com/torvalds/linux/blob/v4.16/arch/x86/boot/main.c). It copies the kernel setup header into the corresponding field of the `boot_params` structure which is defined in the [arch/x86/include/uapi/asm/bootparam.h](https://github.com/torvalds/linux/blob/v4.16/arch/x86/include/uapi/asm/bootparam.h) header file.
The `boot_params` structure contains the `struct setup_header hdr` field. This structure contains the same fields as defined in the [linux boot protocol](https://www.kernel.org/doc/Documentation/x86/boot.txt) and is filled by the boot loader and also at kernel compile/build time. `copy_boot_params` does two things:
1. It copies `hdr` from [header.S](https://github.com/torvalds/linux/blob/v4.16/arch/x86/boot/header.S#L280) to the `setup_header` field in `boot_params` structure.
Note that it copies `hdr` with the `memcpy` function, defined in the [copy.S](https://github.com/torvalds/linux/blob/v4.16/arch/x86/boot/copy.S) source file. Let's have a look inside:
Yeah, we just moved to C code and now assembly again :) First of all, we can see that `memcpy` and other routines which are defined here, start and end with the two macros: `GLOBAL` and `ENDPROC`. `GLOBAL` is described in [arch/x86/include/asm/linkage.h](https://github.com/torvalds/linux/blob/v4.16/arch/x86/include/asm/linkage.h) which defines the `globl` directive and its label. `ENDPROC` is described in [include/linux/linkage.h](https://github.com/torvalds/linux/blob/v4.16/include/linux/linkage.h) and marks the `name` symbol as a function name and ends with the size of the `name` symbol.
The implementation of `memcpy` is simple. At first, it pushes values from the `si` and `di` registers to the stack to preserve their values because they will change during the `memcpy`. As we can see in the `REALMODE_CFLAGS` in `arch/x86/Makefile`, the kernel build system uses the `-mregparm=3` option of GCC, so functions get the first three parameters from `ax`, `dx` and `cx` registers. Calling `memcpy` looks like this:
`memcpy` puts the address of `boot_params.hdr` into `di` and saves `cx` on the stack. After this it shifts the value right 2 times (or divides it by 4) and copies four bytes from the address at `si` to the address at `di`. After this, we restore the size of `hdr` again, align it by 4 bytes and copy the rest of the bytes from the address at `si` to the address at `di` byte by byte (if there is more). Now the values of `si` and `di` are restored from the stack and the copying operation is finished.
After `hdr` is copied into `boot_params.hdr`, the next step is to initialize the console by calling the `console_init` function, defined in [arch/x86/boot/early_serial_console.c](https://github.com/torvalds/linux/blob/v4.16/arch/x86/boot/early_serial_console.c).
It tries to find the `earlyprintk` option in the command line and if the search was successful, it parses the port address and baud rate of the serial port and initializes the serial port. The value of the `earlyprintk` command line option can be one of these:
The definition of `puts` is in [tty.c](https://github.com/torvalds/linux/blob/v4.16/arch/x86/boot/tty.c). As we can see it prints character by character in a loop by calling the `putchar` function. Let's look into the `putchar` implementation:
`__attribute__((section(".inittext")))` means that this code will be in the `.inittext` section. We can find it in the linker file [setup.ld](https://github.com/torvalds/linux/blob/v4.16/arch/x86/boot/setup.ld).
First of all, `putchar` checks for the `\n` symbol and if it is found, prints `\r` before. After that it prints the character on the VGA screen by calling the BIOS with the `0x10` interrupt call:
Here `initregs` takes the `biosregs` structure and first fills `biosregs` with zeros using the `memset` function and then fills it with register values.
As you can read above, it uses the same calling conventions as the `memcpy` function, which means that the function gets its parameters from the `ax`, `dx` and `cx` registers.
The implementation of `memset` is similar to that of memcpy. It saves the value of the `di` register on the stack and puts the value of`ax`, which stores the address of the `biosregs` structure, into `di` . Next is the `movzbl` instruction, which copies the value of `dl` to the lowermost byte of the `eax` register. The remaining 3 high bytes of `eax` will be filled with zeros.
The next instruction multiplies `eax` with `0x01010101`. It needs to because `memset` will copy 4 bytes at the same time. For example, if we need to fill a structure whose size is 4 bytes with the value `0x7` with memset, `eax` will contain the `0x00000007`. So if we multiply `eax` with `0x01010101`, we will get `0x07070707` and now we can copy these 4 bytes into the structure. `memset` uses the `rep; stosl` instruction to copy `eax` into `es:di`.
After the `biosregs` structure is filled with `memset`, `bios_putchar` calls the [0x10](http://www.ctyme.com/intr/rb-0106.htm) interrupt which prints a character. Afterwards it checks if the serial port was initialized or not and writes a character there with [serial_putchar](https://github.com/torvalds/linux/blob/v4.16/arch/x86/boot/tty.c) and `inb/outb` instructions if it was set.
After the stack and bss section have been prepared in [header.S](https://github.com/torvalds/linux/blob/v4.16/arch/x86/boot/header.S) (see previous [part](linux-bootstrap-1.md)), the kernel needs to initialize the [heap](https://github.com/torvalds/linux/blob/v4.16/arch/x86/boot/main.c) with the [`init_heap`](https://github.com/torvalds/linux/blob/v4.16/arch/x86/boot/main.c) function.
First of all `init_heap` checks the [`CAN_USE_HEAP`](https://github.com/torvalds/linux/blob/v4.16/arch/x86/include/uapi/asm/bootparam.h#L24) flag from the [`loadflags`](https://github.com/torvalds/linux/blob/v4.16/arch/x86/boot/header.S#L320) structure in the kernel setup header and calculates the end of the stack if this flag was set:
which means `heap_end_ptr` or `_end` + `512` (`0x200h`). The last check is whether `heap_end` is greater than `stack_end`. If it is then `stack_end` is assigned to `heap_end` to make them equal.
Now the heap is initialized and we can use it using the `GET_HEAP` method. We will see what it is used for, how to use it and how it is implemented in the next posts.
The next step as we can see is cpu validation through the `validate_cpu` function from [arch/x86/boot/cpu.c](https://github.com/torvalds/linux/blob/v4.16/arch/x86/boot/cpu.c) source code file.
It calls the [`check_cpu`](https://github.com/torvalds/linux/blob/v4.16/arch/x86/boot/cpucheck.c) function and passes cpu level and required cpu level to it and checks that the kernel launches on the right cpu level.
The `check_cpu` function checks the CPU's flags, the presence of [long mode](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Long_mode) in the case of x86_64(64-bit) CPU, checks the processor's vendor and makes preparations for certain vendors like turning off SSE+SSE2 for AMD if they are missing, etc.
at the next step, we may see a call to the `set_bios_mode` function after setup code found that a CPU is suitable. As we may see, this function is implemented only for the `x86_64` mode:
```C
static void set_bios_mode(void)
{
#ifdef CONFIG_X86_64
struct biosregs ireg;
initregs(&ireg);
ireg.ax = 0xec00;
ireg.bx = 2;
intcall(0x15, &ireg, NULL);
#endif
}
```
The `set_bios_mode` function executes the `0x15` BIOS interrupt to tell the BIOS that [long mode](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Long_mode) (if `bx == 2`) will be used.
The next step is memory detection through the `detect_memory` function. `detect_memory` basically provides a map of available RAM to the CPU. It uses different programming interfaces for memory detection like `0xe820`, `0xe801` and `0x88`. We will see only the implementation of the **0xE820** interface here.
Let's look at the implementation of the `detect_memory_e820` function from the [arch/x86/boot/memory.c](https://github.com/torvalds/linux/blob/v4.16/arch/x86/boot/memory.c) source file. First of all, the `detect_memory_e820` function initializes the `biosregs` structure as we saw above and fills registers with special values for the `0xe820` call:
Next is a loop where data about the memory will be collected. It starts with a call to the `0x15` BIOS interrupt, which writes one line from the address allocation table. For getting the next line we need to call this interrupt again (which we do in the loop). Before the next call `ebx` must contain the value returned previously:
The next step is the initialization of the keyboard with a call to the [`keyboard_init`](https://github.com/torvalds/linux/blob/v4.16/arch/x86/boot/main.c) function. At first `keyboard_init` initializes registers using the `initregs` function. It then calls the [0x16](http://www.ctyme.com/intr/rb-1756.htm) interrupt to query the status of the keyboard.
The next couple of steps are queries for different parameters. We will not dive into details about these queries but we will get back to them in later parts. Let's take a short look at these functions:
The first step is getting [Intel SpeedStep](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SpeedStep) information by calling the `query_ist` function. It checks the CPU level and if it is correct, calls `0x15` to get the info and saves the result to `boot_params`.
Next, the [query_apm_bios](https://github.com/torvalds/linux/blob/v4.16/arch/x86/boot/apm.c#L21) function gets [Advanced Power Management](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Advanced_Power_Management) information from the BIOS. `query_apm_bios` calls the `0x15` BIOS interruption too, but with `ah` = `0x53` to check `APM` installation. After `0x15` finishes executing, the `query_apm_bios` functions check the `PM` signature (it must be `0x504d`), the carry flag (it must be 0 if `APM` supported) and the value of the `cx` register (if it's 0x02, the protected mode interface is supported).
Next, it calls `0x15` again, but with `ax = 0x5304` to disconnect the `APM` interface and connect the 32-bit protected mode interface. In the end, it fills `boot_params.apm_bios_info` with values obtained from the BIOS.
The last is the [`query_edd`](https://github.com/torvalds/linux/blob/v4.16/arch/x86/boot/edd.c#L122) function, which queries `Enhanced Disk Drive` information from the BIOS. Let's look at how `query_edd` is implemented.
First of all, it reads the [edd](https://github.com/torvalds/linux/blob/v4.16/Documentation/admin-guide/kernel-parameters.rst) option from the kernel's command line and if it was set to `off` then `query_edd` just returns.
where `0x80` is the first hard drive and the value of the `EDD_MBR_SIG_MAX` macro is 16. It collects data into an array of [edd_info](https://github.com/torvalds/linux/blob/v4.16/include/uapi/linux/edd.h) structures. `get_edd_info` checks that EDD is present by invoking the `0x13` interrupt with `ah` as `0x41` and if EDD is present, `get_edd_info` again calls the `0x13` interrupt, but with `ah` as `0x48` and `si` containing the address of the buffer where EDD information will be stored.
This is the end of the second part about the insides of the Linux kernel. In the next part, we will see video mode setting and the rest of the preparations before the transition to protected mode and directly transitioning into it.
**Please note that English is not my first language, And I am really sorry for any inconvenience. If you find any mistakes please send me a PR to [linux-insides](https://github.com/0xAX/linux-internals).**
