[alsa-devel] mixartloader/miXart8.elf lacks full RELRO, PIE and is unstripped

[Takashi Iwai]

On Wed, 22 Jan 2020 12:09:26 +0100,
David Runge wrote:
> 
> Hi!
> 
> I'm (currently) packaging alsa-firmware for Arch Linux and ran across
> the mixartloader/miXart8.elf, which turns out to be lacking full RELRO
> [1], PIE [2] and being unstripped.
> 
> Checking the git log it appears, that Jaroslav Kysela added it in 2003.
> I wonder whether the blob could be rebuilt with full RELRO and PIE and
> be updated.
> 
> Additionally, I'd like to point out, that I don't know, how much of a
> use-case the Digigram miXart8 cards still are in current times, so maybe
> the firmware is also a candidate for being dropped (from the package on
> Arch Linux).
> 
> Any hints, suggestions or ideas are very welcome!

I wonder what's the matter with that.  It's no binary that is executed
on your CPU but just a blob that is simply passed to the hardware chip
as-is, so we can't modify anything.


thanks,

Takashi