Linkable loadable extensions shell module

Overview

This example provides shell access to the Linkable Loadable Extensions (LLEXT) system and provides the ability to manage loadable code extensions in the shell.

Requirements

A board with a supported llext architecture and shell capable console.

Building

west build -b robokit1 samples/subsys/llext/shell_loader

Note

You may need to disable memory protection for the sample to work (e.g. CONFIG_ARM_MPU=n).

Running

Once the board has booted, you will be presented with a shell prompt. All the llext system related commands are available as sub-commands of llext which can be seen with llext help

uart:~$ llext help
llext - Loadable extension commands
Subcommands:
  list          :List loaded extensions and their size in memory
  load_hex      :Load an elf file encoded in hex directly from the shell input.
                 Syntax:
                 <ext_name> <ext_hex_string>
  unload        :Unload an extension by name. Syntax:
                 <ext_name>
  list_symbols  :List extension symbols. Syntax:
                 <ext_name>
  call_fn       :Call extension function with prototype void fn(void). Syntax:
                 <ext_name> <function_name>

A hello world C file can be found in tests/subsys/llext/hello_world/hello_world.c

This can be built into a relocatable elf usable on arm v7 platforms. It can be inspected with some binutils to see symbols, sections, and relocations. Then using additional tools converted to a hex string usable by the llext load_hex shell command.

On a host machine with the zephyr sdk setup and the arm toolchain in PATH

$ arm-zephyr-eabi-gcc -mlong-calls -mthumb -c -o hello_world.elf tests/subsys/llext/hello_world/hello_world.c
$ arm-zephyr-eabi-objdump -r -d -x hello_world.elf

      hello_world.elf:     file format elf32-littlearm
      hello_world.elf
      architecture: armv4t, flags 0x00000011:
      HAS_RELOC, HAS_SYMS
      start address 0x00000000
      private flags = 0x5000000: [Version5 EABI]

      Sections:
      Idx Name          Size      VMA       LMA       File off  Algn
        0 .text         00000038  00000000  00000000  00000034  2**2
                        CONTENTS, ALLOC, LOAD, RELOC, READONLY, CODE
        1 .data         00000000  00000000  00000000  0000006c  2**0
                        CONTENTS, ALLOC, LOAD, DATA
        2 .bss          00000000  00000000  00000000  0000006c  2**0
                        ALLOC
        3 .rodata       00000025  00000000  00000000  0000006c  2**2
                        CONTENTS, ALLOC, LOAD, READONLY, DATA
        4 .comment      00000021  00000000  00000000  00000091  2**0
                        CONTENTS, READONLY
        5 .ARM.attributes 0000002a  00000000  00000000  000000b2  2**0
                        CONTENTS, READONLY
      SYMBOL TABLE:
      00000000 l    df *ABS*  00000000 hello_world.c
      00000000 l    d  .text  00000000 .text
      00000000 l    d  .data  00000000 .data
      00000000 l    d  .bss   00000000 .bss
      00000000 l    d  .rodata        00000000 .rodata
      00000000 l     O .rodata        00000004 number
      00000000 l    d  .comment       00000000 .comment
      00000000 l    d  .ARM.attributes        00000000 .ARM.attributes
      00000000 g     F .text  00000034 hello_world
      00000000         *UND*  00000000 printk



      Disassembly of section .text:

      00000000 <hello_world>:
         0:   b580            push    {r7, lr}
         2:   af00            add     r7, sp, #0
         4:   4b08            ldr     r3, [pc, #32]   ; (28 <hello_world+0x28>)
         6:   0018            movs    r0, r3
         8:   4b08            ldr     r3, [pc, #32]   ; (2c <hello_world+0x2c>)
         a:   f000 f813       bl      34 <hello_world+0x34>
         e:   222a            movs    r2, #42 ; 0x2a
        10:   4b07            ldr     r3, [pc, #28]   ; (30 <hello_world+0x30>)
        12:   0011            movs    r1, r2
        14:   0018            movs    r0, r3
        16:   4b05            ldr     r3, [pc, #20]   ; (2c <hello_world+0x2c>)
        18:   f000 f80c       bl      34 <hello_world+0x34>
        1c:   46c0            nop                     ; (mov r8, r8)
        1e:   46bd            mov     sp, r7
        20:   bc80            pop     {r7}
        22:   bc01            pop     {r0}
        24:   4700            bx      r0
        26:   46c0            nop                     ; (mov r8, r8)
        28:   00000004        .word   0x00000004
                              28: R_ARM_ABS32 .rodata
        2c:   00000000        .word   0x00000000
                              2c: R_ARM_ABS32 printk
        30:   00000014        .word   0x00000014
                              30: R_ARM_ABS32 .rodata
        34:   4718            bx      r3
        36:   46c0            nop                     ; (mov r8, r8)

$ xxd -p hello_world.elf | tr -d '\n'

The resulting hex string can be used to load the extension.

uart:~$ llext load_hex hello_world 7f454c4601010100000000000000000001002800010000000000000000000000680200000000000534000000000028000b000a0080b500af084b1800084b00f013f82a22074b11001800054b00f00cf8c046bd4680bc01bc0047c0460400000000000000140000001847c0462a00000068656c6c6f20776f726c640a0000000041206e756d62657220697320256c750a00004743433a20285a65706879722053444b20302e31362e31292031322e322e30004129000000616561626900011f000000053454000602080109011204140115011703180119011a011e06000000000000000000000000000000000100000000000000000000000400f1ff000000000000000000000000030001000000000000000000000000000300030000000000000000000000000003000400000000000000000000000000030005000f00000000000000000000000000050012000000000000000400000001000500190000000000000000000000000001000f0000002800000000000000000001001900000034000000000000000000010000000000000000000000000003000600000000000000000000000000030007001c000000010000003400000012000100280000000000000000000000100000000068656c6c6f5f776f726c642e63002464006e756d6265720024740068656c6c6f5f776f726c64007072696e746b000028000000020500002c000000020e00003000000002050000002e73796d746162002e737472746162002e7368737472746162002e72656c2e74657874002e64617461002e627373002e726f64617461002e636f6d6d656e74002e41524d2e6174747269627574657300000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000001f0000000100000006000000000000003400000038000000000000000000000004000000000000001b000000090000004000000000000000fc0100001800000008000000010000000400000008000000250000000100000003000000000000006c00000000000000000000000000000001000000000000002b0000000800000003000000000000006c0000000000000000000000000000000100000000000000300000000100000002000000000000006c00000025000000000000000000000004000000000000003800000001000000300000000000000091000000210000000000000000000000010000000100000041000000030000700000000000000000b20000002a0000000000000000000000010000000000000001000000020000000000000000000000dc000000f0000000090000000d000000040000001000000009000000030000000000000000000000cc0100002f0000000000000000000000010000000000000011000000030000000000000000000000140200005100000000000000000000000100000000000000

This extension can then be seen in the list of loaded extensions (list), its symbols printed (list_symbols), and the hello_world function which the extension exports can be called and run (call_fn).

uart:~$ llext call_fn hello_world hello_world
hello world
A number is 42

In this sample there are 3 absolute (R_ARM_ABS32) relocations, 2 of which are meant to hold addresses into the .rodata sections where the strings are located. A third is an address of where the printk function (symbol) can be found. At load time llext replaces the values in the .text section with real memory addresses so that printk works as expected with the strings included in the hello world sample.