On Thu, May 12, 2011 at 12:47 AM, Dave Hylands <dhylands@gmail.com> wrote:
Hi Vikram,
On Wed, May 11, 2011 at 11:06 AM, Vikram Narayanan <vikram186@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. So in case of x86, say Grub will be taking care of this extraction. Right? If, so the grub code will have the mechanisms for extracting the raw binary from ELF. Am i right?
- Thanks, Vikram