In the fifth [part](http://0xax.gitbooks.io/linux-insides/content/Booting/linux-bootstrap-5.html) of the series `Linux kernel booting process` we learned about what the kernel does in its earliest stage. In the next step the kernel will initialize different things like `initrd` mounting, lockdep initialization, and many many others things, before we can see how the kernel runs the first init process.
In my view, memory management is one of the most complex part of the linux kernel and in system programming in general. This is why before we proceed with the kernel initialization stuff, we need to get acquainted with paging.
`Paging` is a mechanism that translates a linear memory address to a physical address. If you have read the previous parts of this book, you may remember that we saw segmentation in real mode when physical addresses are calculated by shifting a segment register by four and adding an offset. We also saw segmentation in protected mode, where we used the descriptor tables and base addresses from descriptors with offsets to calculate the physical addresses. Now that we are in 64-bit mode, will see paging.
> Paging provides a mechanism for implementing a conventional demand-paged, virtual-memory system where sections of a program’s execution environment are mapped into physical memory as needed.
So... In this post I will try to explain the theory behind paging. Of course it will be closely related to the `x86_64` version of the linux kernel for, but we will not go into too much details (at least in this post).
We already saw where those this bits were set in [arch/x86/boot/compressed/head_64.S](https://github.com/torvalds/linux/blob/master/arch/x86/boot/compressed/head_64.S):
Paging divides the linear address space into fixed-size pages. Pages can be mapped into the physical address space or even external storage. This fixed size is `4096` bytes for the `x86_64` linux kernel. To perform the linear address translation to a physical address special structures are used. Every structure is `4096` bytes size and contains `512` entries (this only for `PAE` and `IA32_EFER.LME` modes). Paging structures are hierarchical and the linux kernel uses 4 level of paging in the `x86_64` architecture. The CPU uses a part of the linear address to identify the entry in another paging structure which is at the lower level or physical memory region (`page frame`) or physical address in this region (`page offset`). The address of the top level paging structure located in the `cr3` register. We already saw this in [arch/x86/boot/compressed/head_64.S](https://github.com/torvalds/linux/blob/master/arch/x86/boot/compressed/head_64.S):
We built the page table structures and put the address of the top-level structure in the `cr3` register. Here `cr3` is used to store the address of the top-level structure, the `PML4` or `Page Global Directory` as it is called in the linux kernel. `cr3` is 64-bit register and has the following structure:
* Bits 51:12 - stores the address of the top level paging structure;
* Bit 3 and 4 - PWT or Page-Level Writethrough and PCD or Page-level cache disable indicate. These bits control the way the page or Page Table is handled by the hardware cache;
* 64-bit linear address splits on some parts. Only low 48 bits are significant, it means that `2^48` or 256 TBytes of linear-address space may be accessed at any given time.
*`cr3` register stores the address of the 4 top-level paging structure.
*`47:39` bits of the given linear address stores an index into the paging structure level-4, `38:30` bits stores index into the paging structure level-3, `29:21` bits stores an index into the paging structure level-2, `20:12` bits stores an index into the paging structure level-1 and `11:0` bits provide the byte offset into the physical page.
Every access to a linear address is either a supervisor-mode access or a user-mode access. This access is determined by the `CPL` (current privilege level). If `CPL < 3` it is a supervisor mode access level otherwise, otherwise it is a user mode access level. For example, the top level page table entry contains access bits and has the following structure:
After you've compiled and installed the linux kernel, you can see the `System.map` file which stores the virtual addresses of the functions that are used by the kernel. For example:
We can see `0xffffffff81efe497` here. I doubt you really have that much RAM installed. But anyway, `start_kernel` and `x86_64_start_kernel` will be executed. The address space in `x86_64` is `2^64` size, but it's too large, that's why a smaller address space is used, only 48-bits wide. So we have a situation where the physical address space is limited to 48 bits, but addressing still performed with 64 bit pointers. How is this problem solved? Look at this diagram:
This solution is `sign extension`. Here we can see that the lower 48 bits of a virtual address can be used for addressing. Bits `63:48` can be either only zeroes or only ones. Note that the virtual address space is split in 2 parts:
Userspace occupies the lower part of the virtual address space, from `0x000000000000000` to `0x00007fffffffffff` and kernel space occupies the highest part from `0xffff8000000000` to `0xffffffffffffffff`. Note that bits `63:48` is 0 for userspace and 1 for kernel space. All addresses which are in kernel space and in userspace or in other words which higher `63:48` bits are zeroes or ones are called `canonical` addresses. There is a `non-canonical` area between these memory regions. Together these two memory regions (kernel space and user space) are exactly `2^48` bits wide. We can find the virtual memory map with 4 level page tables in the [Documentation/x86/x86_64/mm.txt](https://github.com/torvalds/linux/blob/master/Documentation/x86/x86_64/mm.txt):
We can see here the memory map for user space, kernel space and the non-canonical area in-between them. The user space memory map is simple. Let's take a closer look at the kernel space. We can see that it starts from the guard hole which is reserved for the hypervisor. We can find the definition of this guard hole in [arch/x86/include/asm/page_64_types.h](https://github.com/torvalds/linux/blob/master/arch/x86/include/asm/page_64_types.h):
Previously this guard hole and `__PAGE_OFFSET` was from `0xffff800000000000` to `0xffff80ffffffffff` to prevent access to non-canonical area, but was later extended by 3 bits for the hypervisor.
Next is the lowest usable address in kernel space - `ffff880000000000`. This virtual memory region is for direct mapping of the all physical memory. After the memory space which maps all physical addresses, the guard hole. It needs to be between the direct mapping of all the physical memory and the vmalloc area. After the virtual memory map for the first terabyte and the unused hole after it, we can see the `kasan` shadow memory. It was added by [commit](https://github.com/torvalds/linux/commit/ef7f0d6a6ca8c9e4b27d78895af86c2fbfaeedb2) and provides the kernel address sanitizer. After the next unused hole we can see the `esp` fixup stacks (we will talk about it in other parts of this book) and the start of the kernel text mapping from the physical address - `0`. We can find the definition of this address in the same file as the `__PAGE_OFFSET`:
Usually kernel's `.text` start here with the `CONFIG_PHYSICAL_START` offset. We saw it in the post about [ELF64](https://github.com/0xAX/linux-insides/blob/master/Theory/ELF.md):
```
readelf -s vmlinux | grep ffffffff81000000
1: ffffffff81000000 0 SECTION LOCAL DEFAULT 1
65099: ffffffff81000000 0 NOTYPE GLOBAL DEFAULT 1 _text
90766: ffffffff81000000 0 NOTYPE GLOBAL DEFAULT 1 startup_64
```
Here i checked `vmlinux` with the `CONFIG_PHYSICAL_START` is `0x1000000`. So we have the start point of the kernel `.text` - `0xffffffff80000000` and offset - `0x1000000`, the resulted virtual address will be `0xffffffff80000000 + 1000000 = 0xffffffff81000000`.
We've seen how the kernel's virtual memory map is laid out and how a virtual address is translated into a physical one. Let's take for example following address:
It's the end of this short part about paging theory. Of course this post doesn't cover every detail of paging, but soon we'll see in practice how the linux kernel builds paging structures and works with them.
**Please note that English is not my first language and I am really sorry for any inconvenience. If you've found any mistakes please send me PR to [linux-insides](https://github.com/0xAX/linux-insides).**
