Linus observed that the symbol_request(utf8_data_table) call fails when
CONFIG_UNICODE=y and CONFIG_TRIM_UNUSED_KSYMS=y.
symbol_get() relies on the symbol data being present in the ksymtab for
symbol lookups. However, EXPORT_SYMBOL_GPL(utf8_data_table) is dropped
due to CONFIG_TRIM_UNUSED_KSYMS, as no module references it in this case.
Probably, this has been broken since commit dbacb0ef67 ("kconfig option
for TRIM_UNUSED_KSYMS").
This commit addresses the issue by leveraging modpost. Symbol names
passed to symbol_get() are recorded in the special .no_trim_symbol
section, which is then parsed by modpost to forcibly keep such symbols.
The .no_trim_symbol section is discarded by the linker scripts, so there
is no impact on the size of the final vmlinux or modules.
This commit cannot resolve the issue for direct calls to __symbol_get()
because the symbol name is not known at compile-time.
Although symbol_get() may eventually be deprecated, this workaround
should be good enough meanwhile.
Reported-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>
Suggested-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>
Signed-off-by: Masahiro Yamada <masahiroy@kernel.org>