[VicPiMakers Projects] How programs get run: ELF binaries

[Mark G.]

This popped up on Hacker News, and it was related to today's
discussion with James and Dave.

How programs get run: ELF binaries

https://lwn.net/Articles/631631/

It's an old article (2015), but I doubt that makes much of
a difference.

An excerpt:

"The ELF format

The ELF (Executable and Linkable Format) format is the main
binary format in use on modern Linux systems, and support
for it is implemented in the file fs/binfmt_elf.c. It's also
a slightly complicated format for the kernel to handle; the
main load_elf_binary() function spans over 400 lines, and
the ELF support code is more than four times as big as the
code that supports the old a.out format.

An ELF file for an executable program (rather than a shared
library or an object file) must always contain a program
header table near the start of the file, after the ELF header;
each entry in this table provides information that is needed
to run the program. ..."