[VicPiMakers Projects] How programs get run: ELF binaries

[Craig Miller]

Thanks Mark,

With that I found this good history, and more detail on the ELF format.

https://www-users.cse.umn.edu/~smccaman/courses/8980/spring2020/lectures/04-elf-v2-8up.pdf

It even mentions the COFF format used before ELF.

Craig...

On 10/25/25 3:44 PM, James Canova wrote:
> Super.
>
> On Sat, Oct 25, 2025, 3:31 p.m. Mark G. <vicpm+25 at palaceofretention.ca 
> <mailto:vicpm%2B25 at palaceofretention.ca>> wrote:
>
>     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/ <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. ..."
>
>
>
>
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