Kernel dealing with the section headers in an ELF

Posted by uki on Stack Overflow See other posts from Stack Overflow or by uki
Published on 2014-06-06T03:21:46Z Indexed on 2014/06/06 3:24 UTC
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linux

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kernel

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elf

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sectionheader

I recently read that the kernel and the dynamic loader mostly deal with the program header tables in an ELF file and that assemblers, compilers and linkers deal with the section header tables.

The number of program header tables and section header tables are mentioned in the ELF header in fields named e_phnum and e_shnum respectively. e_phnum is two bytes in size, so if the number of program headers is > 65535, we use a scheme known as extended numbering where, e_phnum is set to 0xffff and sh_link field of the zeroth section header table holds the actual count.

My doubt is : If the count of program headers exceeds 65535, does that mean the kernel and/or the dynamic loader end up having to read the section table?

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