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Date:	Thu, 11 Oct 2007 17:39:24 +0100
From:	Thiemo Seufer <ths@networkno.de>
To:	"Maciej W. Rozycki" <macro@linux-mips.org>
Cc:	Franck Bui-Huu <vagabon.xyz@gmail.com>,
	Ralf Baechle <ralf@linux-mips.org>,
	Geert Uytterhoeven <geert@linux-m68k.org>,
	linux-mips <linux-mips@linux-mips.org>
Subject: Re: [RFC] Add __initbss section
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References: <470DF25E.60009@gmail.com> <20071011152615.GE3379@networkno.de> <Pine.LNX.4.64N.0710111707010.16370@blysk.ds.pg.gda.pl>
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Maciej W. Rozycki wrote:
> On Thu, 11 Oct 2007, Thiemo Seufer wrote:
> 
> > > Also not that with the current patchset applied, there are now 2
> > > segments that need to be loaded, hopefully it won't cause any issues
> > > with any bootloaders out there that would assume that an image has
> > > only one segment...
> > 
> > This breaks at least conversion to ECOFF as used on DECstations.
> 
>  Indeed, thanks for pointing it out -- I use ELF over MOP and keep 
> forgetting about people preferring TFTP, sigh.  I wonder whether `objcopy' 
> might be doing a better job than `elf2ecoff' these days though.  It may be 
> worth checking...

The problem seems to be that (DECstation-firmware's view of) ECOFF can
only handle a single .text segment.

>  It all boils down to padding out what cannot be expressed in a less 
> capable format after all.  That's what I did in `mopd' for ELF support too 
> -- holes between segments are transmitted as zeroes.

AFAICS this won't work for interleaved .text / .data / .bss segments.


Thiemo