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/16f73eb02d7e1765ccab3d2018e0bd98eb93d973/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/16f73eb02d7e1765ccab3d2018e0bd98eb93d973/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`. `memcpy` and other functions in copy.S use `fastcall` calling conventions. So it gets its incoming parameters from the`ax`, `dx` and `cx` registers. Calling `memcpy` looks like this:
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:
```c
memcpy(&boot_params.hdr, &hdr, sizeof hdr);
@ -304,7 +304,7 @@ GLOBAL(memset)
ENDPROC(memset)
```
As you can read above, it uses the `fastcall` calling conventions like the `memcpy` function, which means that the function gets its parameters from the `ax`, `dx` and `cx` registers.
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 lower 2 bytes of the `eax` register. The remaining 2 high bytes of `eax` will be filled with zeros.
@ -187,7 +187,7 @@ At the end, we can see the call to the `extract_kernel` function:
popq %rsi
```
Again we set `rdi` to a pointer to the `boot_params` structure and preserve it on the stack. In the same time we set `rsi` to point to the area which should be usedd for kernel uncompression. The last step is preparation of the `extract_kernel` parameters and call of this function which will uncompres the kernel. The `extract_kernel` function is defined in the [arch/x86/boot/compressed/misc.c](https://github.com/torvalds/linux/blob/16f73eb02d7e1765ccab3d2018e0bd98eb93d973/arch/x86/boot/compressed/misc.c) source code file and takes six arguments:
Again we set `rdi` to a pointer to the `boot_params` structure and preserve it on the stack. In the same time we set `rsi` to point to the area which should be used for kernel uncompression. The last step is preparation of the `extract_kernel` parameters and call of this function which will uncompres the kernel. The `extract_kernel` function is defined in the [arch/x86/boot/compressed/misc.c](https://github.com/torvalds/linux/blob/16f73eb02d7e1765ccab3d2018e0bd98eb93d973/arch/x86/boot/compressed/misc.c) source code file and takes six arguments:
* `rmode` - pointer to the [boot_params](https://github.com/torvalds/linux/blob/16f73eb02d7e1765ccab3d2018e0bd98eb93d973//arch/x86/include/uapi/asm/bootparam.h#L114) structure which is filled by bootloader or during early kernel initialization;
* `heap` - pointer to the `boot_heap` which represents start address of the early boot heap;
Dongliang Mu
6 years ago
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