On Wed, Sep 23, 2026 at 12:36 PM Shreshth Srivastava
<[email protected]> wrote:
>
> On 11.09.26 10:41, Juergen Gross wrote:
> > When building a kernel with CONFIG_PARAVIRT_XXL the paravirt
> > infrastructure will always use functions for reading or writing MSRs,
> > even when running on bare metal.
>
> Hi Juergen,
>
> This doesn't build with CONFIG_PARAVIRT_XXL=y. 16/17 and 17/17 are where
> it breaks, but the cause is the .byte fallbacks: ASM_WRMSRNS_IMM from
> 08/17 and ASM_RDMSR_IMM from 10/17 don't end in a separator, unlike the
> .insn variants above them.
>
>   #define ASM_RDMSR_IMM                         \
>         " .byte 0xc4,0xe7,0x7b,0xf6,0xc0; .long %c[msr]"
>
> That worked while they were only ever the last argument of an
> ALTERNATIVE(), which appends its own newline. 16/17 concatenates them
> with ASM_CLRERR:
>
>         ASM_RDMSR_IMM ASM_CLRERR, X86_FEATURE_MSR_IMM,  \
>
> so the .long operand runs into the xor. From
> make arch/x86/kernel/cpu/common.s:
>
>         .byte 0xc4,0xe7,0x7b,0xf6,0xc0; .long 266xor %rdx,%rdx
>
>   paravirt-msr.h:165: Error: junk at end of line, first unrecognized 
> character is `x'
>
> clang reports "error: unexpected token" in the same place. 71 objects
> fail, the same 71 either way, no vmlinux.
>
> msr.h chooses between the .insn form and the .byte fallback with:
>
>         #if defined(CONFIG_AS_IS_GNU) && CONFIG_AS_VERSION >= 24100
>
> Two kinds of toolchain end up on the .byte side of that test:
>
>   - GNU as older than 2.41. RHEL 9 and CentOS Stream 9 ship 2.35, and
>     Documentation/process/changes.rst sets the minimum at 2.30, so this
>     is a supported configuration rather than an old outlier.
>   - clang, any version. CONFIG_AS_IS_GNU is never set for clang, so the
>     && short-circuits and the version comparison is never reached. Your
>     08/17 comment already notes that clang has no .insn support.

Indeed, looks like we're missing support for .insn for x86.
Filed https://github.com/llvm/llvm-project/issues/225916.
(Please do file bugs against the toolchain when you encounter issues
like this, and cc someone from kernel development).

>
> gcc with binutils 2.41 or newer takes the .insn path, where both macros
> do end in a separator, and is unaffected.
>
> Reproduced on v7.3-rc2 with your v3 00/13, v2 0/5 and v5 00/17 applied in
> that order, x86_64 defconfig plus HYPERVISOR_GUEST, PARAVIRT, XEN and
> XEN_PV. gcc 11.5.0 with GNU as 2.35.2, and clang 21.1.7.
>
> Terminating both fallbacks fixes it, and both toolchains then build
> vmlinux with no errors or warnings:
>
> diff --git a/arch/x86/include/asm/msr.h b/arch/x86/include/asm/msr.h
> index eba325ecfe4c..529c13553c63 100644
> --- a/arch/x86/include/asm/msr.h
> +++ b/arch/x86/include/asm/msr.h
> @@ -78,9 +78,9 @@ static inline void do_trace_rdpmc(u32 msr, u64 val, int 
> failed) {}
>   * form MSR access instructions reference %rax as the register operand.
>   */
>  #define ASM_RDMSR_IMM                          \
> -       " .byte 0xc4,0xe7,0x7b,0xf6,0xc0; .long %c[msr]"
> +       " .byte 0xc4,0xe7,0x7b,0xf6,0xc0; .long %c[msr]\n\t"
>  #define ASM_WRMSRNS_IMM                                \
> -       " .byte 0xc4,0xe7,0x7a,0xf6,0xc0; .long %c[msr]"
> +       " .byte 0xc4,0xe7,0x7a,0xf6,0xc0; .long %c[msr]\n\t"
>  #endif
>
>  #define RDMSR_AND_SAVE_RESULT                  \
>
> ASM_WRMSRNS needs no change, _ASM_BYTES() already emits a semicolon.
>
> The WRMSRNS line belongs in 08/17 and the RDMSR line in 10/17.
>
> Thanks,
> Shreshth



-- 
Thanks,
~Nick Desaulniers

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