> In message <200007270856.BAA10352@shell17.ba.best.com>, Todd Whitesel writes:
> >Sorry, I started checking my usual reference toolchains and couldn't find
> >solid evidence for or against PROGBITS, then I ran out of time to look at it
> >so I didn't say anything.
> 
> OK, great. Knowing that someone has an idea of how this is supposed to
> work makes me feel much better.

Careful, I am no expert on the NetBSD loader itself; I do have lots of GDB
experience though and we're seeing ELF a lot more these days.

>      Load the phdr stuff
>      Check if there's a symtab
>        If so, load all symtabs and strtabs

Hmm, the phdr stuff is actually where my ELF knowledge is weakest.
(Most of the code I deal with only cares about sections.)

> D'you have a recommendation on whether we should load .stab
> explicitly by name, or by some other characteristic (i.e. all PROGBITS
> that have not been previously loaded, though that'd sort of be a pain).

Most toolchains (GNU and a few commercial ones I have dealt with) all look
for .stab and .stabstr by name. So don't worry about doing this.

> I'll also update the i386 manpage for boot(8) to indicate what the
> from loadfile mean when loading sections. Is there some MI place for
> this?

No idea. Anyone? Anyone?   "Bueller?"

Todd Whitesel
toddpw @ best.com