From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Received: from mailserv2.iuinc.com (qmailr@mailserv2.iuinc.com [206.245.164.55]) by puffin.external.hp.com (8.8.7/8.8.7) with SMTP id RAA05246 for ; Fri, 19 Nov 1999 17:56:17 -0700 Message-Id: <199911200057.QAA23404@adlmail.cup.hp.com> Subject: Re: [parisc-linux] Today's boot experience on a 735 Date: Fri, 19 Nov 1999 16:57:59 -0800 From: Cary Coutant To: "Philipp Rumpf" , "John David Anglin" cc: "Jeff Law" , , Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="US-ASCII" List-ID: Could someone explain to me what the real problem with the _end symbol is? I can't seem to extract the essence of the problem from all the mail that's flying by. The SOM linker is supposed to create the symbol "_etext" at the end of the last text subspace, the symbol "_edata" at the end of the last initialized data subspace, and the symbol "_end" at the end of the last data subspace. It shouldn't matter what the name of the subspace is, or what its sort key is. Common symbols get allocated at the end of the last data subspace, and the "_end" symbol should be at the end of that. If something is being allocated by the linker after "_end", I'd like to understand why. You should be able to use "_edata" and "_end" to figure out how much memory to initialize to zero at startup, or you could have the boot loader do that for you -- the information is in the a.out aux header. By the way, the SOM linker does support "scripts" of a sort. They're called k-files (because you use the -k option to specify them), and they allow you to control the placement of your spaces and subspaces within the address space. -cary