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Comment by jart

12 days ago

You want:

    long ax;
    asm volatile("syscall" : "=a"(ax) : "0"(1), "D"(1), "S"("hello world!\n"), "d"(14));

You can also say:

    long ax = 1;
    asm volatile("syscall" : "+a"(ax) : "D"(1), "S"("hello world!\n"), "d"(14));

https://justine.lol/dox/rmsiface.txt

Got some sleep and took a second look. You actually want:

    long ax = 1;
    asm volatile("syscall" : "+a"(ax) : "D"(1), "S"("hello world!\n"), "d"(14) : "rcx", "r11");

Sorry folks! Note also this only works on Linux. On BSDs for example, even if you change the magic number, BSDs may clobber all the call-clobbered registers. So with those OSes it's usually simplest to write an assembly stub like this:

    my_write:
      mov $4,%eax
      syscall
      ret

  • I don't suppose you know the syscall clobbered list for aarch64 Linux? Can't find it documented anywhere and not sure how to dig it out of the kernel

    A sibling comment pointed at https://chromium.googlesource.com/linux-syscall-support/+/re... which suggests none are clobbered outside of the arguments used by a given call which is possible but seems unlikely

    • I think that's accurate. Example code:

          static privileged int GetPid(void) {
            int res;
          #ifdef __x86_64__
            asm volatile("syscall"
                         : "=a"(res)
                         : "0"(__NR_linux_getpid)
                         : "rcx", "r11", "memory");
          #elif defined(__aarch64__)
            register long res_x0 asm("x0");
            asm volatile("mov\tx8,%1\n\t"
                         "svc\t0"
                         : "=r"(res_x0)
                         : "i"(__NR_linux_getpid)
                         : "x8", "memory");
            res = res_x0;
          #endif
            return res;
          }
      

      You should be fine.