Re: Using objdump to force a section to load with gdb.

[Brendan Simon <brendan@dgs.monash.edu.au>]

Ian Lance Taylor wrote:

> The problem with using objcopy to set the LOAD flag is that the only
> sections which are loaded are those which are stored in program
> segments.  objcopy isn't prepared to create a new program segment in
> order to change a section flag.  This would be difficult to fix.
>
> If your loader reads the section headers rather than the segment
> headers, then you may be able to make this work by doing something
> like
>     powerpc-linux-objcopy --set-section-flags=image=alloc,load myzimage
> The reason is that ELF records the ALLOC flag in the section header,
> and objcopy should know how to change that.
>
> The best way to make a loadable section is to mark the section as
> loadable in the first place.  See the gas documentation for how to set
> the section flags when using the .section directive.

I'm not sure if this is applicable when the section is added with "objcopy
--add-section=image=vmlinux.gz", where vmlinux.gz is an elf file that has been
compressed with gzip.  How does one add this file as a section to an existing
elf file (bootloader) as "loadable in the first place" ?

Brendan Simon.