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Re: [PATCH for-4.22] xen/x86: Always strip xen.efi


  • To: Andrew Cooper <andrew.cooper3@xxxxxxxxxx>
  • From: Jan Beulich <jbeulich@xxxxxxxx>
  • Date: Thu, 11 Jun 2026 16:38:58 +0200
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  • Cc: Frediano Ziglio <frediano.ziglio@xxxxxxxxxx>, Roger Pau Monné <roger.pau@xxxxxxxxxx>, Teddy Astie <teddy.astie@xxxxxxxxxx>, Oleksii Kurochko <oleksii.kurochko@xxxxxxxxx>, Marek Marczykowski-Górecki <marmarek@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>, "Daniel P . Smith" <dpsmith@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>, Xen-devel <xen-devel@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
  • Delivery-date: Thu, 11 Jun 2026 14:39:09 +0000
  • List-id: Xen developer discussion <xen-devel.lists.xenproject.org>

On 08.06.2026 19:31, Andrew Cooper wrote:
> From: Frediano Ziglio <frediano.ziglio@xxxxxxxxxx>
> 
> xen.efi with debugging symbols is ~45MB, down to ~9.3MB when stripped.
> Multiple firmwares (as seen by QubesOS, Trenchboot, and XenServer) are unable
> to boot xen.efi when debugging symbols are included.
> 
> Either way, having debug symbols by default is abnormal and contrary to how
> the non-EFI path works.

I'm not happy with how things are put here. There's nothing abnormal about
including about anything. What is abnormal is the manufacturing of a 32-bit
ELF binary from a 64-bit one by mkelf32, to please bootloaders. An EFI
binary should be permitted to include whatever data it wants, and firmware
should be able to load it as long as memory permits. I don't expect you
mean to indicate that problematic systems don't have 45Mb available at boot.

Including debug info can be a waste of I/O bandwidth and memory, when the
loader doesn't skip loading those .debug_* sections (for valid or bogus
reasons).

> Produce xen-syms.efi unconditionally, just like xen-syms.  If
> CONFIG_DEBUG_INFO is enabled, these will contain debug symbols, and if not,
> then not.  When xen-syms is processed by mkelf32, the debug symbols are simply
> discarded.  For xen-syms.efi, call $(STRIP) to produce xen.efi.
> 
> Some old versions of binutils ld managed to produce efi files which the
> matching version of strip couldn't process.  This includes Binutils 2.26
> included in Ubuntu 16.04.  Delete the workaround for this bug, and require a
> less broken toolchain.

And we're certain newer versions of strip don't do any harm to the binaries?
Already towards Frediano's posting I said that having looked at how things
work there, I'm far from certain.

Jan



 


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