> Gave it a bit of thought today, and I think I know what happened.
> 
> Looking at the libc sources, it looks like the strcmp and strncmp
> functions assume that both strings are in the same 64Kb segment. (There
> may be other functions that make this assumption as well, but I haven't
> really looked).

They assume right! In ELKS DS=SS=ES.

By the way, the CVS ELKS tree solves many memory problems but requires a
patch to the linker that I posted here some time ago and never got in
the linker tree... :(

Harry