ELF2AOUT(1) BSD Reference Manual ELF2AOUT(1)
elf2aout - convert a MirBSD ELF-format executable to MirBSD a.out format
elf2aout elf-file aout-file [-bs]
Reads a fully-linked ELF executable (such as a linked kernel) and pro-
duces an equivalent a.out format executable file.
The elf2aout utility is used to convert native MirBSD BSD ELF binaries to
a.out format, for compatibility with bootblocks and kernel-reading utili-
ties like kvm(3) and kvm_mkdb(8), as well as some versions of Open-
Firmware, which currently expect an a.out format kernel.
When using the -s option, the a.out header magic symbol flag is set. When
using the -b flag, on certain architectures a different a.out header mag-
ic MID (machine ID) is set, to allow for creating bootable images. The
values set are MID_PMAX on EM_MIPS and 0x0103 on EM_SPARC
ld(1), kvm(3), a.out(5), elf(5), kvm_mkdb(8)
elf2aout was originally developed for NetBSD(R)/pmax by Ted Lemon and was
first distributed with the pmax port of NetBSD 1.1. elf2aout appeared in
MirBSD #7ter. Endianness awareness was added for MirBSD #9.
elf2aout assumes there are no multiply-referenced symbols in the input
ELF symbol section. It may be necessary to link with the -x option to
ld(1) to avoid such duplicate symbols.
In some environments, the GNU binutils objcopy(1) utility may be a better
solution than elf2aout.
MirBSD #10-current September 30, 1996 1