And I just double check, the transition happened from 2.6.25 to 2.6.26: This is makefile fragment of 2.6.25: linux-2.6.25/arch/x86/boot/compressed/Makefile OBJCOPYFLAGS_vmlinux.bin := -O binary -R .note -R .comment -S $(obj)/vmlinux.bin: vmlinux FORCE $(call if_changed,objcopy) while the following is makefile fragment of 2.6.26: linux-2.6.26/arch/x86/boot/compressed/Makefile: OBJCOPYFLAGS_vmlinux.bin := -R .comment -S $(obj)/vmlinux.bin: vmlinux FORCE $(call if_changed,objcopy) The "-O binary" is removed. And I don't find any changelog. Jacky At 2013-03-02 15:54:33,Jacky <jackyclivia@163.com> wrote: Hi All, Recently, I found that x86 vmlinux.bin are changed from raw image to elf, we can got it from the following objcopy flags: linux-3.7.x/arch/x86/boot/compressed/Makefile： OBJCOPYFLAGS_vmlinux.bin := -R .comment -S $(obj)/vmlinux.bin: vmlinux FORCE $(call if_changed,objcopy) we can see that kbuild pass no "-O binary" to objcopy. And I double check the vmlinux.bin as following: linux-3.7.x/arch/x86/boot/compressed$ file vmlinux.bin vmlinux.bin: ELF 32-bit LSB executable, Intel 80386, version 1 (SYSV), statically linked, BuildID[sha1]=0x7ad967473a9b36bc529551eecd326b5dfd15a426, stripped Make sure the vmlinux.bin is elf, not raw binary. Anyone knows the rootcause ? Thanks, Jacky