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<a href="https://gitlab.rtems.org/aftwasiq">Abdullah Wasiq</a>
<a href="https://gitlab.rtems.org/rtems/rtos/rtems/-/issues/5191#note_143447">commented</a>:
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<p dir="auto" style="color: #3a383f; margin: 0 0 1rem;" align="initial">I've been interested in this issue for a bit. I came across the binutils mailing list (over <a href="https://sourceware.org/pipermail/binutils/2026-January/147930.html" rel="nofollow noreferrer noopener" target="_blank" style="margin-top: 0;">here</a>) and it seems the issue may not have to do with .bss end/start symbols at all. The aarch64 BSP linkcmds has this:</p>
<p dir="auto" style="color: #3a383f; margin: 0 0 1rem;" align="initial"><code style="font-size: 90%; color: #18171d; word-wrap: break-word; background-color: #ececef; border-radius: .25rem; margin-top: 0; font-weight: inherit; overflow-wrap: break-word; white-space: break-spaces; font-family: "GitLab Mono", "JetBrains Mono", "Menlo", "DejaVu Sans Mono", "Liberation Mono", "Consolas", "Ubuntu Mono", "Courier New", "andale mono", "lucida console", monospace; font-variant-ligatures: none; word-break: keep-all; padding: 0.125rem 0.25rem;">RAM : ORIGIN = 1073741824 + 32768, LENGTH = 134217728 - 32768 - 1048576</code></p>
<p dir="auto" style="color: #3a383f; margin: 0 0 1rem;" align="initial">This is about 127 MB of RAM. Does this mean a section of RAM being empty at runtime, is the culprit here? I did some research, and correct me if i'm wrong, but it seems in the Berkeley mode, size uses flags to fill up the space, ALLOC & NOBITS, in the .bss component. However, if you have additional special sections of RAM like .work & .stack (what I noticed specifically in the linkcmds.base as potential contenders for the garbage memory), and if these sections are set to alloc but contain no data, their sizes will be put into .bss. Specifically for .work, it seems to allocate all remaining RAM into it, meaning it could very well pass the entire allocated RAM as .bss:</p>
<p dir="auto" style="color: #3a383f; margin: 0 0 1rem;" align="initial"><code style="font-size: 90%; color: #18171d; word-wrap: break-word; background-color: #ececef; border-radius: .25rem; margin-top: 0; font-weight: inherit; overflow-wrap: break-word; white-space: break-spaces; font-family: "GitLab Mono", "JetBrains Mono", "Menlo", "DejaVu Sans Mono", "Liberation Mono", "Consolas", "Ubuntu Mono", "Courier New", "andale mono", "lucida console", monospace; font-variant-ligatures: none; word-break: keep-all; padding: 0.125rem 0.25rem;">. += ORIGIN (REGION_WORK) + LENGTH (REGION_WORK) - ABSOLUTE (.);</code></p>
<p dir="auto" style="color: #3a383f; margin: 0 0 1rem;" align="initial">So this basically means the size util adds .work, .stack, and .bss then "passes" it completely as .bss.</p>
<p dir="auto" style="color: #3a383f; margin: 0 0 1rem;" align="initial">Maybe this is why .bss reported by size is close to the total RAM allocated?</p>
<p dir="auto" style="color: #3a383f; margin: 0;" align="initial"><a href="https://gitlab.rtems.org/joel" title="Joel Sherrill" class="gfm gfm-project_member js-user-link" data-user="7" data-original="@joel" data-container="body" data-placement="top" data-reference-type="user" style="color: #284779; background-color: #cbe2f9; border-radius: .25rem; margin-top: 0; padding: 0 2px;">@joel</a> Do you think there are other ways to approach this? Or is this issue something deeper now?</p>
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