20699a42c0
This was unclear to me until Russell explained the obvious that 8 nops are added to offset an a.out image. Reading git history reveals that thumb kernels first removed the nops and then kept 7 of them (the last instruction being a switch to thumb mode) as it turns out that some boot loaders were using this as a "patch area". Also the magic numbers after the initial nops and the jump of course need to stay in the same offset for kernel file detection. Make the code easier to understand with a comment. Cc: Ard Biesheuvel <ard.biesheuvel@linaro.org> Acked-by: Nicolas Pitre <nico@fluxnic.net> Acked-by: Roy Franz <rfranz@marvell.com> Signed-off-by: Linus Walleij <linus.walleij@linaro.org> Signed-off-by: Russell King <rmk+kernel@armlinux.org.uk>
Linux kernel
============
There are several guides for kernel developers and users. These guides can
be rendered in a number of formats, like HTML and PDF. Please read
Documentation/admin-guide/README.rst first.
In order to build the documentation, use ``make htmldocs`` or
``make pdfdocs``. The formatted documentation can also be read online at:
https://www.kernel.org/doc/html/latest/
There are various text files in the Documentation/ subdirectory,
several of them using the Restructured Text markup notation.
Please read the Documentation/process/changes.rst file, as it contains the
requirements for building and running the kernel, and information about
the problems which may result by upgrading your kernel.