Calling printf in x86_64 using GNU assembler

Question

I've written a program using AT&T syntax for use with GNU assembler:

            .data
format:   .ascii "%d\n"  

            .text
            .global main  
main:
            mov    $format, %rbx
            mov    (%rbx), %rdi
            mov    $1, %rsi
            call     printf
            ret

I use GCC to assemble and link with:

gcc -o main main.s

I run it with this command:

./main

When I run the program I get a seg fault. By using gdb, it says printf not found. I have tried ".extern printf", which does not work. Someone suggested I should store the stack pointer before calling printf and restore before RET, How do I do that?

Answer 1

There are a number of issues with this code. The AMD64 System V ABI calling convention used by Linux requires a few things. It requires that just before a CALL that the stack be at least 16-byte (or 32-byte) aligned:

The end of the input argument area shall be aligned on a 16 (32, if __m256 is passed on stack) byte boundary.

After the C runtime calls your main function the stack is misaligned by 8 because the return pointer was placed on the stack by CALL. To realign to 16-byte boundary you can simply PUSH any general purpose register onto the stack and POP it off at the end.

The calling convention also requires that AL contain the number of vector registers used for a variable argument function:

%al is used to indicate the number of vector arguments passed to a function requiring a variable number of arguments

printf is a variable argument function, so AL needs to be set. In this case you don't pass any parameters in a vector register so you can set AL to 0.

You also dereference the $format pointer when it is already an address. So this is wrong:

mov  $format, %rbx
mov  (%rbx), %rdi 

This takes the address of format and places it in RBX. Then you take the 8 bytes at that address in RBX and place them in RDI. RDI needs to be a pointer to a string of characters, not the characters themselves. The two lines could be replaced with:

lea  format(%rip), %rdi

This uses RIP Relative Addressing.

You should also NUL terminate your strings. Rather than use .ascii you can use .asciz on the x86 platform.

A working version of your program could look like:

# global data  #
    .data
format: .asciz "%d\n"
.text
    .global main
main:
  push %rbx
  lea  format(%rip), %rdi
  mov  $1, %esi           # Writing to ESI zero extends to RSI.
  xor %eax, %eax          # Zeroing EAX is efficient way to clear AL.
  call printf
  pop %rbx
  ret

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Other Recommendations/Suggestions

You should also be aware from the 64-bit Linux ABI, that the calling convention also requires functions you write to honor the preservation of certain registers. The list of registers and whether they should preserved is as follows:

Any register that says Yes in the Preserved across function calls column are ones you must ensure are preserved across your function. Function main is like any other C function.

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If you have strings/data that you know will be read only you can place them in the .rodata section with .section .rodata rather than .data

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In 64-bit mode: if you have a destination operand that is a 32-bit register, the CPU will zero extend the register across the entire 64-bit register. This can save bytes on the instruction encoding.

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It is possible your executable is being compiled as position independent code. You may receive an error similar to:

relocation R_X86_64_PC32 against symbol `printf@@GLIBC_2.2.5' can not be used when making a shared object; recompile with -fPIC

To fix this you'll have to call the external function printf this way:

call printf@plt 

This calls the external library function via the Procedure Linkage Table (PLT)