NAME

elf2aout — convert a NetBSD ELF-format executable to NetBSD a.out format

SYNOPSIS

elf2aout

elf-file aout-file

DESCRIPTION

Reads a fully-linked ELF executable (such as a linked kernel) and produces an equivalent a.out format executable file.

The elf2aout utility is used to convert native NetBSD ELF binaries to a.out format, for compatibility with bootblocks and kernel-reading utilities like kvm(3) and kvm_mkdb(8), which currently expect an a.out format kernel.

SEE ALSO

elf2ecoff(1), ld(1), kvm(3), a.out(5), elf(5), kvm_mkdb(8)

HISTORY

elf2aout was originally developed for NetBSD/pmax by Ted Lemon and was first distributed with the pmax port of NetBSD 1.1.

BUGS

elf2aout assumes there are no multiply-referenced symbols in the input ELF symbol section. It may be necessary to link with -x to avoid such duplicate symbols.

In some environments, the GNU binutils objcopy(1) utility may be a better solution than elf2aout.