Bug 112592

Created attachment 96684 [details]
Example test program

Hmm, it looks like I spoke too soon...
It still crashes sometimes, even with prelinking disabled.

After some more investigation, it looks like the Exec-shield
functionality has something to do with it too. On my system with
Exec-shield enabled and prelink disabled, it still crashes. I
understand why too now, because the fixed memory mapping of 4 MB at
address 0 my program makes sometimes overlaps with the place where the
C library is mapped. Using setarch fixes this issue, and also
disabling Exec-shield globally. However, this doesn't work for a
prelinked library.

I guess I just can't use prelinking in this case, unless I can somehow
make it exclude certain memory ranges... (I *need* the memory mapping
at address 0 since this is some kind of emulator).

Exec-shield places libraries below the binary (starting from
1MB+4KB up to the beginning of the binary).
If your program needs to use MAP_FIXED on a region not given by the kernel to you
(e.g. MAP_FIXED on previously returned address from mmap without MAP_FIXED
if the region is smaller or equal is always ok), then you need to tell the system
about it.
The best way is to create a p_flags 0 PT_LOAD segment with p_filesz 0
and p_memsz equal to the size of the region you want to reserve,
p_vaddr equal to the start address.
Then it will work even with exec-shield, prelinking etc.
ATM it is not exactly trivial to create such PT_LOAD segments, it needs
quite many changes to the linker script (see PHDRS linker script command),
but it is on my TODO list to simplify this.

Alternatively, you need to disable exec-shield for that particular
program.  With rawhide glibc and maybe already rawhide kernel (am not sure
whether the patch is in there already) if you build your program as PIE
and disable exec-shield for it, it should load even prelinked libraries
high.

Or, if you don't want exec-shield system-wide, you can add --no-exec-shield
option to /etc/sysconfig/prelink and force reprelinking.