The ELF loading logic in the Linux kernel is intentionally very simple, so it's more like a bare-bones subset of what the dynamic linker handles. matheusmoreira

The ELF loading logic in the Linux kernel is intentionally very simple, so it's more like a bare-bones subset of what the dynamic linker handles. matheusmoreira summarizes it well in a previous discussion [0]: > Yeah it turns out the kernel doesn't care about sections at all. It only ever cares about the PT_LOAD segments in the program header table, which is essentially a table of arguments for the mmap system call. Sections are just dynamic linker metadata and are never covered by PT_LOAD segments. The simplicity of the ELF loader in Linux can be exploited to make extremely small executables [1], since most of the data in the ELF header is stuff that the kernel doesn't care about. [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45706380#45709203 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45706380#45709203 [1] https://www.muppetlabs.com/~breadbox/software/tiny/teensy.html https://www.muppetlabs.com/~breadbox/software/tiny/teensy.ht...