the code in __libc_start_main is now responsible for parsing auxv,
rather than duplicating the parsing all over the place. this should
shave off a few cycles and some code size. __init_libc is left as an
external-linkage function despite the fact that it could be static, to
prevent it from being inlined and permanently wasting stack space when
main is called.
a few other minor changes are included, like eliminating per-thread
ssp canaries (they were likely broken when combined with certain
dlopen usages, and completely unnecessary) and some other unnecessary
checks. since this code gets linked into every program, it should be
as small and simple as possible.
previously, this usage could lead to a crash if the thread pointer was
still uninitialized, and otherwise would just cause the canary to be
zero (less secure).
pthread structure has been adjusted to match the glibc/GCC abi for
where the canary is stored on i386 and x86_64. it will need variants
for other archs to provide the added security of the canary's entropy,
but even without that it still works as well as the old "minimal" ssp
support. eventually such changes will be made anyway, since they are
also needed for GCC/C11 thread-local storage support (not yet
implemented).
care is taken not to attempt initializing the thread pointer unless
the program actually uses SSP (by reference to __stack_chk_fail).
the code is written to pre-init the thread pointer in static linked
programs that pull in __stack_chk_fail or dynamic-linked programs that
lookup the symbol. no explicit canary is set; the canary will be
whatever happens to be in the thread structure at the offset gcc
hard-coded. this can be improved later.
Szabolcs Nagy
Rich Felker