How vmlinux is recognized?

[Dave Hylands]

Hi Vikram,

On Wed, May 11, 2011 at 11:06 AM, Vikram Narayanan <vikram186 at gmail.com> wrote:
> Hi,
>
> Sorry if this question is stupid.
> How the vmlinux (an ELF executable) is recognized by the processor?
> What are the files that are responsible for this?

Well the short answer is that it isn't.

The ELF file is normally just one stage of the process. You still need
to extract a binary from the ELF, and the binary contains the raw
executable code that the processor uses.

Normally the boot loader will extract a binary (perhaps from an ELF,
or perhaps from a raw binary image) and this is what the processor
sees.

-- 
Dave Hylands
Shuswap, BC, Canada
http://www.davehylands.com