If you have been reading my previous [blog posts](http://0xax.blogspot.com/search/label/asm), then you can see that, for some time, I have been starting to get involved in low-level programming. I have written some posts about x86_64 assembly programming for Linux and, at the same time, I have also started to dive into the Linux source code. I have a great interest in understanding how low-level things work, how programs run on my computer, how are they located in memory, how the kernel manages processes & memory, how the network stack works at a low level, and many many other things. So, I have decided to write yet another series of posts about the Linux kernel for **x86_64**.
Note that I'm not a professional kernel hacker and I don't write code for the kernel at work. It's just a hobby. I just like low-level stuff, and it is interesting for me to see how these things work. So if you notice anything confusing, or if you have any questions/remarks, ping me on Twitter [0xAX](https://twitter.com/0xAX), drop me an [email](anotherworldofworld@gmail.com) or just create an [issue](https://github.com/0xAX/linux-insides/issues/new). I appreciate it. All posts will also be accessible at [linux-insides](https://github.com/0xAX/linux-insides) and, if you find something wrong with my English or the post content, feel free to send a pull request.
Anyway, if you just start to learn some tools, I will try to explain some parts during this and the following posts. Alright, this is the end of the simple introduction, and now we can start to dive into the kernel and low-level stuff.
Although this is a series of posts about the Linux kernel, we will not be starting from the kernel code - at least not, in this paragraph. As soon as you press the magical power button on your laptop or desktop computer, it starts working. The motherboard sends a signal to the [power supply](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Power_supply). After receiving the signal, the power supply provides the proper amount of electricity to the computer. Once the motherboard receives the [power good signal](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Power_good_signal), it tries to start the CPU. The CPU resets all leftover data in its registers and sets up predefined values for each of them.
The processor starts working in [real mode](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Real_mode). Let's back up a little and try to understand memory segmentation in this mode. Real mode is supported on all x86-compatible processors, from the [8086](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intel_8086) all the way to the modern Intel 64-bit CPUs. The 8086 processor has a 20-bit address bus, which means that it could work with a 0-0xFFFFF address space (1 megabyte). But it only has 16-bit registers, which have a maximum address of `2^16 - 1` or `0xffff` (64 kilobytes). [Memory segmentation](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Memory_segmentation) is used to make use of all the address space available. All memory is divided into small, fixed-size segments of 65536 bytes (64 KB). Since we cannot address memory above 64 KB with 16-bit registers, an alternate method is devised. An address consists of two parts: a segment selector, which has a base address, and an offset from this base address. In real mode, the associated base address of a segment selector is `Segment Selector * 16`. Thus, to get a physical address in memory, we need to multiply the segment selector part by 16 and add the offset:
which is 65520 bytes past the first megabyte. Since only one megabyte is accessible in real mode, `0x10ffef` becomes `0x00ffef` with disabled [A20](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A20_line).
The `CS` register consists of two parts: the visible segment selector, and the hidden base address. While the base address is normally formed by multiplying the segment selector value by 16, during a hardware reset the segment selector in the CS register is loaded with `0xf000` and the base address is loaded with `0xffff0000`; the processor uses this special base address until `CS` is changed.
We get `0xfffffff0`, which is 16 bytes below 4GB. This point is called the [Reset vector](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reset_vector). This is the memory location at which the CPU expects to find the first instruction to execute after reset. It contains a [jump](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/JMP_%28x86_instruction%29) (`jmp`) instruction that usually points to the BIOS entry point. For example, if we look in the [coreboot](http://www.coreboot.org/) source code, we see:
Here we can see the `jmp` instruction [opcode](http://ref.x86asm.net/coder32.html#xE9), which is `0xe9`, and its destination address at `_start - ( . + 2)`. We can also see that the `reset` section is 16 bytes and that it starts at `0xfffffff0`:
Now the BIOS starts; after initializing and checking the hardware, the BIOS needs to find a bootable device. A boot order is stored in the BIOS configuration, controlling which devices the BIOS attempts to boot from. When attempting to boot from a hard drive, the BIOS tries to find a boot sector. On hard drives partitioned with an MBR partition layout, the boot sector is stored in the first 446 bytes of the first sector, where each sector is 512 bytes. The final two bytes of the first sector are `0x55` and `0xaa`, which designates to the BIOS that this device is bootable. For example:
This will instruct [QEMU](http://qemu.org) to use the `boot` binary that we just built as a disk image. Since the binary generated by the assembly code above fulfills the requirements of the boot sector (the origin is set to `0x7c00` and we end with the magic sequence), QEMU will treat the binary as the master boot record (MBR) of a disk image.
In this example, we can see that the code will be executed in 16-bit real mode and will start at `0x7c00` in memory. After starting, it calls the [0x10](http://www.ctyme.com/intr/rb-0106.htm) interrupt, which just prints the `!` symbol; it fills the remaining 510 bytes with zeros and finishes with the two magic bytes `0xaa` and `0x55`.
A real-world boot sector has code for continuing the boot process and a partition table instead of a bunch of 0's and an exclamation mark :) From this point onwards, the BIOS hands over control to the bootloader.
just as explained before. We have only 16-bit general purpose registers; the maximum value of a 16-bit register is `0xffff`, so if we take the largest values, the result will be:
where `0x10ffef` is equal to `1MB + 64KB - 16b`. An [8086](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intel_8086) processor (which was the first processor with real mode), in contrast, has a 20-bit address line. Since `2^20 = 1048576` is 1MB, this means that the actual available memory is 1MB.
In the beginning of this post, I wrote that the first instruction executed by the CPU is located at address `0xFFFFFFF0`, which is much larger than `0xFFFFF` (1MB). How can the CPU access this address in real mode? The answer is in the [coreboot](http://www.coreboot.org/Developer_Manual/Memory_map) documentation:
There are a number of bootloaders that can boot Linux, such as [GRUB 2](https://www.gnu.org/software/grub/) and [syslinux](http://www.syslinux.org/wiki/index.php/The_Syslinux_Project). The Linux kernel has a [Boot protocol](https://github.com/torvalds/linux/blob/master/Documentation/x86/boot.txt) which specifies the requirements for a bootloader to implement Linux support. This example will describe GRUB 2.
Continuing from before, now that the BIOS has chosen a boot device and transferred control to the boot sector code, execution starts from [boot.img](http://git.savannah.gnu.org/gitweb/?p=grub.git;a=blob;f=grub-core/boot/i386/pc/boot.S;hb=HEAD). This code is very simple, due to the limited amount of space available, and contains a pointer which is used to jump to the location of GRUB 2's core image. The core image begins with [diskboot.img](http://git.savannah.gnu.org/gitweb/?p=grub.git;a=blob;f=grub-core/boot/i386/pc/diskboot.S;hb=HEAD), which is usually stored immediately after the first sector in the unused space before the first partition. The above code loads the rest of the core image, which contains GRUB 2's kernel and drivers for handling filesystems, into memory. After loading the rest of the core image, it executes [grub_main](http://git.savannah.gnu.org/gitweb/?p=grub.git;a=blob;f=grub-core/kern/main.c).
`grub_main` initializes the console, gets the base address for modules, sets the root device, loads/parses the grub configuration file, loads modules, etc. At the end of execution, `grub_main` moves grub to normal mode. `grub_normal_execute` (from `grub-core/normal/main.c`) completes the final preparations and shows a menu to select an operating system. When we select one of the grub menu entries, `grub_menu_execute_entry` runs, executing the grub `boot` command and booting the selected operating system.
As we can read in the kernel boot protocol, the bootloader must read and fill some fields of the kernel setup header, which starts at the `0x01f1` offset from the kernel setup code. You may look at the boot [linker script](https://github.com/torvalds/linux/blob/master/arch/x86/boot/setup.ld#L16) to make sure in this offset. The kernel header [arch/x86/boot/header.S](https://github.com/torvalds/linux/blob/master/arch/x86/boot/header.S) starts from:
The bootloader must fill this and the rest of the headers (which are only marked as being type `write` in the Linux boot protocol, such as in [this example](https://github.com/torvalds/linux/blob/master/Documentation/x86/boot.txt#L354)) with values which it has either received from the command line or calculated. (We will not go over full descriptions and explanations for all fields of the kernel setup header now but instead when the discuss how kernel uses them; you can find a description of all fields in the [boot protocol](https://github.com/torvalds/linux/blob/master/Documentation/x86/boot.txt#L156).)
The bootloader has now loaded the Linux kernel into memory, filled the header fields, and then jumped to the corresponding memory address. We can now move directly to the kernel setup code.
Finally, we are in the kernel! Technically, the kernel hasn't run yet; first, we need to set up the kernel, memory manager, process manager, etc. Kernel setup execution starts from [arch/x86/boot/header.S](https://github.com/torvalds/linux/blob/master/arch/x86/boot/header.S) at [_start](https://github.com/torvalds/linux/blob/master/arch/x86/boot/header.S#L293). It is a little strange at first sight, as there are several instructions before it.
Actually, `header.S` starts from [MZ](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DOS_MZ_executable) (see image above), the error message printing and following the [PE](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Portable_Executable) header:
It needs this to load an operating system with [UEFI](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unified_Extensible_Firmware_Interface). We won't be looking into its inner workings right now and will cover it in upcoming chapters.
The bootloader (grub2 and others) knows about this point (`0x200` offset from `MZ`) and makes a jump directly to it, despite the fact that `header.S` starts from the `.bstext` section, which prints an error message:
Here we can see a `jmp` instruction opcode (`0xeb`) that jumps to the `start_of_setup-1f` point. In `Nf` notation, `2f` refers to the following local `2:` label; in our case, it is label `1` that is present right after the jump, and it contains the rest of the setup [header](https://github.com/torvalds/linux/blob/master/Documentation/x86/boot.txt#L156). Right after the setup header, we see the `.entrytext` section, which starts at the `start_of_setup` label.
This is the first code that actually runs (aside from the previous jump instructions, of course). After the kernel setup received control from the bootloader, the first `jmp` instruction is located at the `0x200` offset from the start of the kernel real mode, i.e., after the first 512 bytes. This we can both read in the Linux kernel boot protocol and see in the grub2 source code:
First of all, the kernel ensures that `ds` and `es` segment registers point to the same address. Next, it clears the direction flag using the `cld` instruction:
As I wrote earlier, grub2 loads kernel setup code at address `0x10000` and `cs` at `0x1020` because execution doesn't start from the start of file, but from
`jump`, which is at a 512 byte offset from [4d 5a](https://github.com/torvalds/linux/blob/master/arch/x86/boot/header.S#L47). It also needs to align `cs` from `0x10200` to `0x10000`, as well as all other segment registers. After that, we set up the stack:
which pushes the value of `ds` to the stack with the address of the [6](https://github.com/torvalds/linux/blob/master/arch/x86/boot/header.S#L494) label and executes the `lretw` instruction. When the `lretw` instruction is called, it loads the address of label `6` into the [instruction pointer](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Program_counter) register and loads `cs` with the value of `ds`. Afterward, `ds` and `cs` will have the same values.
Almost all of the setup code is in preparation for the C language environment in real mode. The next [step](https://github.com/torvalds/linux/blob/master/arch/x86/boot/header.S#L467) is checking the `ss` register value and making a correct stack if `ss` is wrong:
Here we can see the alignment of `dx` (contains `sp` given by bootloader) to 4 bytes and a check for whether or not it is zero. If it is zero, we put `0xfffc` (4 byte aligned address before the maximum segment size of 64 KB) in `dx`. If it is not zero, we continue to use `sp`, given by the bootloader (0xf7f4 in my case). After this, we put the `ax` value into `ss`, which stores the correct segment address of `0x10000` and sets up a correct `sp`. We now have a correct stack:
* In the second scenario, (`ss` != `ds`). First, we put the value of [_end](https://github.com/torvalds/linux/blob/master/arch/x86/boot/setup.ld#L52) (the address of the end of the setup code) into `dx` and check the `loadflags` header field using the `testb` instruction to see whether we can use the heap. [loadflags](https://github.com/torvalds/linux/blob/master/arch/x86/boot/header.S#L321) is a bitmask header which is defined as:
If the `CAN_USE_HEAP` bit is set, we put `heap_end_ptr` into `dx` (which points to `_end`) and add `STACK_SIZE` (minimum stack size, 512 bytes) to it. After this, if `dx` is not carried (it will not be carried, dx = _end + 512), jump to label `2` (as in the previous case) and make a correct stack.
The last two steps that need to happen before we can jump to the main C code are setting up the [BSS](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/.bss) area and checking the "magic" signature. First, signature checking:
This simply compares the [setup_sig](https://github.com/torvalds/linux/blob/master/arch/x86/boot/setup.ld#L39) with the magic number `0x5a5aaa55`. If they are not equal, a fatal error is reported.
If the magic number matches, knowing we have a set of correct segment registers and a stack, we only need to set up the BSS section before jumping into the C code.
The BSS section is used to store statically allocated, uninitialized data. Linux carefully ensures this area of memory is first zeroed using the following code:
First, the [__bss_start](https://github.com/torvalds/linux/blob/master/arch/x86/boot/setup.ld#L47) address is moved into `di`. Next, the `_end + 3` address (+3 - aligns to 4 bytes) is moved into `cx`. The `eax` register is cleared (using a `xor` instruction), and the bss section size (`cx`-`di`) is calculated and put into `cx`. Then, `cx` is divided by four (the size of a 'word'), and the `stosl` instruction is used repeatedly, storing the value of `eax` (zero) into the address pointed to by `di`, automatically increasing `di` by four, repeating until `cx` reaches zero). The net effect of this code is that zeros are written through all words in memory from `__bss_start` to `_end`:
The `main()` function is located in [arch/x86/boot/main.c](https://github.com/torvalds/linux/blob/master/arch/x86/boot/main.c). You can read about what this does in the next part.
This is the end of the first part about Linux kernel insides. If you have questions or suggestions, ping me on Twitter [0xAX](https://twitter.com/0xAX), drop me an [email](anotherworldofworld@gmail.com), or just create an [issue](https://github.com/0xAX/linux-internals/issues/new). In the next part, we will see the first C code that executes in the Linux kernel setup, the implementation of memory routines such as `memset`, `memcpy`, `earlyprintk`, early console implementation and initialization, and much more.
**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 PR to [linux-insides](https://github.com/0xAX/linux-internals).**
