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@jakosv jakosv commented Aug 20, 2025

Discarding the .note.hwasan.globals section in ldscript causes a linker error, since hwasan_globals refers to the discarded section. The issue comes from hwasan.dummy.global being associated via metadata with .note.hwasan.globals.

Add a new -hwasan-static-linking option to skip inserting .note.hwasan.globals for static binaries, as it is only needed for instrumenting globals from dynamic libraries. In static binaries, the global variables section can be accessed directly via the __start_hwasan_globals and __stop_hwasan_globals symbols inserted by the linker.

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llvmbot commented Aug 20, 2025

@llvm/pr-subscribers-llvm-transforms

@llvm/pr-subscribers-compiler-rt-sanitizer

Author: Vadim Marchenko (jakosv)

Changes

Discarding the .note.hwasan.globals section in ldscript causes a linker error, since hwasan_globals refers to the discarded section. The issue comes from hwasan.dummy.global being associated via metadata with .note.hwasan.globals.

Add a new -hwasan-static-linking option to skip inserting .note.hwasan.globals for static binaries, as it is only needed for instrumenting globals from dynamic libraries. In static binaries, the global variables section can be accessed directly via the __start_hwasan_globals and __stop_hwasan_globals symbols inserted by the linker.


Full diff: https://github.com/llvm/llvm-project/pull/154529.diff

2 Files Affected:

  • (modified) llvm/lib/Transforms/Instrumentation/HWAddressSanitizer.cpp (+9)
  • (added) llvm/test/Instrumentation/HWAddressSanitizer/globals-static-linking.ll (+34)
diff --git a/llvm/lib/Transforms/Instrumentation/HWAddressSanitizer.cpp b/llvm/lib/Transforms/Instrumentation/HWAddressSanitizer.cpp
index fc34d14259d1f..c5d3af1a1b42e 100644
--- a/llvm/lib/Transforms/Instrumentation/HWAddressSanitizer.cpp
+++ b/llvm/lib/Transforms/Instrumentation/HWAddressSanitizer.cpp
@@ -212,6 +212,12 @@ static cl::opt<float>
                               "OR because of the hot percentile cutoff, if "
                               "both are supplied."));
 
+static cl::opt<bool> ClStaticLinking(
+    "hwasan-static-linking",
+    cl::desc("don't use .note.hwasan.globals section to instrument globals "
+             "from loadable libraries"),
+    cl::Hidden, cl::init(false));
+
 STATISTIC(NumTotalFuncs, "Number of total funcs");
 STATISTIC(NumInstrumentedFuncs, "Number of instrumented funcs");
 STATISTIC(NumNoProfileSummaryFuncs, "Number of funcs without PS");
@@ -547,6 +553,9 @@ void HWAddressSanitizer::createHwasanCtorComdat() {
             appendToGlobalCtors(M, Ctor, 0, Ctor);
           });
 
+  if (ClStaticLinking)
+    return;
+
   // Create a note that contains pointers to the list of global
   // descriptors. Adding a note to the output file will cause the linker to
   // create a PT_NOTE program header pointing to the note that we can use to
diff --git a/llvm/test/Instrumentation/HWAddressSanitizer/globals-static-linking.ll b/llvm/test/Instrumentation/HWAddressSanitizer/globals-static-linking.ll
new file mode 100644
index 0000000000000..a3bb49d61f274
--- /dev/null
+++ b/llvm/test/Instrumentation/HWAddressSanitizer/globals-static-linking.ll
@@ -0,0 +1,34 @@
+; RUN: opt < %s -S -passes=hwasan -mtriple=aarch64--linux-android29 -hwasan-static-linking=1 | FileCheck --check-prefixes=CHECK,CHECK29 %s
+; RUN: opt < %s -S -passes=hwasan -mtriple=aarch64--linux-android30 -hwasan-static-linking=1 | FileCheck --check-prefixes=CHECK,CHECK30 %s
+; RUN: opt < %s -S -passes=hwasan -mtriple=riscv64-unknown-elf -hwasan-globals=1 -hwasan-static-linking=1 | FileCheck --check-prefixes=CHECK,CHECK30 %s
+
+; CHECK29: @four = global
+
+; CHECK: @specialcaselisted = global i16 2, no_sanitize_hwaddress
+
+; CHECK30: @four.hwasan = private global { i32, [12 x i8] } { i32 1, [12 x i8] c"\00\00\00\00\00\00\00\00\00\00\00\AC" }, align 16
+; CHECK30: @four.hwasan.descriptor = private constant { i32, i32 } { i32 trunc (i64 sub (i64 ptrtoint (ptr @four.hwasan to i64), i64 ptrtoint (ptr @four.hwasan.descriptor to i64)) to i32), i32 -1409286140 }, section "hwasan_globals", !associated [[FOUR:![0-9]+]]
+
+; CHECK30: @sixteen.hwasan = private global [16 x i8] zeroinitializer, align 16
+; CHECK30: @sixteen.hwasan.descriptor = private constant { i32, i32 } { i32 trunc (i64 sub (i64 ptrtoint (ptr @sixteen.hwasan to i64), i64 ptrtoint (ptr @sixteen.hwasan.descriptor to i64)) to i32), i32 -1392508912 }, section "hwasan_globals", !associated [[SIXTEEN:![0-9]+]]
+
+; CHECK30: @huge.hwasan = private global [16777232 x i8] zeroinitializer, align 16
+; CHECK30: @huge.hwasan.descriptor = private constant { i32, i32 } { i32 trunc (i64 sub (i64 ptrtoint (ptr @huge.hwasan to i64), i64 ptrtoint (ptr @huge.hwasan.descriptor to i64)) to i32), i32 -1358954512 }, section "hwasan_globals", !associated [[HUGE:![0-9]+]]
+; CHECK30: @huge.hwasan.descriptor.1 = private constant { i32, i32 } { i32 trunc (i64 add (i64 sub (i64 ptrtoint (ptr @huge.hwasan to i64), i64 ptrtoint (ptr @huge.hwasan.descriptor.1 to i64)), i64 16777200) to i32), i32 -1375731680 }, section "hwasan_globals", !associated [[HUGE]]
+
+; CHECK-NOT: @hwasan.note = private constant { i32, i32, i32, [8 x i8], i32, i32 } { i32 8, i32 8, i32 3, [8 x i8] c"LLVM\00\00\00\00", i32 trunc (i64 sub (i64 ptrtoint (ptr @__start_hwasan_globals to i64), i64 ptrtoint (ptr @hwasan.note to i64)) to i32), i32 trunc (i64 sub (i64 ptrtoint (ptr @__stop_hwasan_globals to i64), i64 ptrtoint (ptr @hwasan.note to i64)) to i32) }, section ".note.hwasan.globals", comdat($hwasan.module_ctor), align 4
+
+; CHECK30: @four = alias i32, inttoptr (i64 add (i64 ptrtoint (ptr @four.hwasan to i64), i64 -6052837899185946624) to ptr)
+; CHECK30: @sixteen = alias [16 x i8], inttoptr (i64 add (i64 ptrtoint (ptr @sixteen.hwasan to i64), i64 -5980780305148018688) to ptr)
+; CHECK30: @huge = alias [16777232 x i8], inttoptr (i64 add (i64 ptrtoint (ptr @huge.hwasan to i64), i64 -5908722711110090752) to ptr)
+
+; CHECK30: [[FOUR]] = !{ptr @four.hwasan}
+; CHECK30: [[SIXTEEN]] = !{ptr @sixteen.hwasan}
+; CHECK30: [[HUGE]] = !{ptr @huge.hwasan}
+
+source_filename = "foo"
+
+@four = global i32 1
+@sixteen = global [16 x i8] zeroinitializer
+@huge = global [16777232 x i8] zeroinitializer
+@specialcaselisted = global i16 2, no_sanitize_hwaddress

@@ -547,6 +553,9 @@ void HWAddressSanitizer::createHwasanCtorComdat() {
appendToGlobalCtors(M, Ctor, 0, Ctor);
});

if (ClStaticLinking)
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I think it would be cleaner to pull the code below out into a function, and call that if (!ClStaticLinking). Otherwise someone might add something to the end not realizing this early return in the long function.

Also please add a comment to the same effect of the commit message explaining what this is for.

@@ -0,0 +1,34 @@
; RUN: opt < %s -S -passes=hwasan -mtriple=aarch64--linux-android29 -hwasan-static-linking=1 | FileCheck --check-prefixes=CHECK,CHECK29 %s
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can we add this as a new RUN line for an existing test?

Discarding the `.note.hwasan.globals` section in ldscript causes a
linker error, since `hwasan_globals` refers to the discarded section.
The issue comes from `hwasan.dummy.global` being associated via metadata
with `.note.hwasan.globals`.

Add a new `-hwasan-static-linking` option to skip inserting
`.note.hwasan.globals` for static binaries, as it is only needed for
instrumenting globals from dynamic libraries. In static binaries, the
global variables section can be accessed directly via the
`__start_hwasan_globals` and `__stop_hwasan_globals` symbols inserted by
the linker.
@jakosv jakosv force-pushed the hwasan-opt-static-linking branch from a0a9e51 to fe753a9 Compare August 25, 2025 09:30
@fmayer fmayer merged commit 511210d into llvm:main Aug 26, 2025
7 of 9 checks passed
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