Add description of info struct and elf tag

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Philipp Oppermann
2015-11-11 23:32:36 +01:00
parent 1f074264c0
commit c064de5190

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@@ -3,9 +3,74 @@ layout: post
title: 'The Multiboot Information Structure'
---
When a multiboot compliant bootloader loads a kernel, it passes a pointer to a boot information struct in the `ebx` register. We can use it to get information about available memory and loaded kernel sections. So let's write a module for it!
When a Multiboot compliant bootloader loads a kernel, it passes a pointer to a boot information structure in the `ebx` register. We can use it to get information about available memory and loaded kernel sections.
TODO
## The Structure
The Multiboot information structure looks like this:
Field | Type
---------------- | -----------
total size | u32
reserved | u32
tags | variable
end tag = (0, 8) | (u32, u32)
There are many different types of tags, but they all have the same beginning:
Field | Type
------------- | -----------------
type | u32
size | u32
other fields | variable
All tags are 8-byte aligned. The last tag must be the _end tag_, which is a tag of type `0` and size `8`.
## A Rust module
TODO
## Tags
We are interested in two tags, the _Elf-symbols_ tag and the _memory map_ tag. For a full list of possible tags see section 3.4 in the Multiboot 2 specification ([PDF][Multiboot 2]).
[Multiboot 2]: http://nongnu.askapache.com/grub/phcoder/multiboot.pdf
### The Elf-Symbols Tag
The Elf-symbols tag contains a list of all sections of the loaded [ELF] kernel. It has the following format:
[ELF]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Executable_and_Linkable_Format
Field | Type
--------------------------- | -----------------
type = 9 | u32
size | u32
number of entries | u16
entry size | u16
string table | u16
reserved | u16
section headers | variable
The section headers are just copied from the ELF file, so we need to look at the ELF specification to find the corresponding structure definition. Our kernel is a 64-bit ELF file, so we need to look at the ELF-64 specification ([PDF][ELF specification]). According to section 4 and figure 3, a section header has the following format:
[ELF specification]: http://www.uclibc.org/docs/elf-64-gen.pdf
Field | Type | Value
--------------------------- | ---------------- | -----------
name | u32 | string table index
type | u32 | `0` (unused), `1` (section of program), `3` (string table), `8` (uninitialized section), etc.
flags | u64 | `0x1` (writable), `0x2` (loaded), `0x4` (executable), etc.
address | u64 | virtual start address of section (0 if not loaded)
file offset | u64 | offset (in bytes) of section contents in the file
size | u64 | size of the section in bytes
link | u32 | associated section (only for some section types)
info | u32 | extra information (only for some section types)
address align | u64 | required alignment of section (power of 2)
entry size | u64 | contains the entry size for table sections (e.g. string table)
### The Memory Map Tag
TODO
## Start and End of Kernel