On Thu, Jan 27, 2000 at 09:26:50PM -0500, Charles Lepple wrote:
> Ralf Baechle wrote:
> > On Wed, Jan 26, 2000 at 08:26:34PM -0500, Charles Lepple wrote:
> > > The PPC board that I used would not load ELF images with extra sections,
> [...]
> > In which case the PPC's ELF loader is hopless broken. An ELF loader is
> > a quite simple thing, it only needs to process all the PT_LOAD entries
> > in the programm header table, done.
>
> sorry to spam the lists, but I just have to clear the PPC name :-)
>
> The boot firmware was for VxWorks, which evidently uses files which
> resemble ELF binaries down to the headers. I won't name the company who
> wrote the BSP, but it was pretty weak code (a little research in the
> Linux/PPC lists may turn stuff up though...)
>
> Most standards-compilant (PReP, CHRP) boards do load things correctly,
> however.
On the MIPS-side the price for firmware weirdness goes to SNI's ARC firmware
which always loads programs to the address specified in the address + 8
bytes. The really sick thing is that behaviour is even allowed by the
ARC spec even though it's truly undesired behaviour for a kernel loader.
Luckily this can be fixed with objcopy :-)
Ralf
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