Trying to utilize code generated (cross-compiled) by GCC on a MIPS architecture simulator. Basically, I've built (using crosstool-ng) cross-compiler and other cross-* tools, and am now able to generate code for MIPS target. The executable generated is then to be disassembled by objdump, and then fed to MIPS architecture simulator that I'm using (hoping to do some computer architecture related research). In any case, the simulator is processing all the code from the __start section without any issues, but then it hangs when the jump is made to code from .MIPS.stubs section - this code in particular: 004024b0 <.MIPS.stubs>: 4024b0: 8f998010 lw t9,-32752(gp) 4024b4: 03e07821 move t7,ra 4024b8: 0320f809 jalr t9 The problem is that t9 is loaded with 0 here, and then trying to jump to address zero is invalid. Now, I'm trying to understand what's going on in this code, but to no avail so far; so - any suggestion on what is this section of code intended for, and what kind of procedure should be called through this JALR assembly instruction? I tried with running the same executable on real MIPS hardware, and trace the execution using "stepi" command in the debugger, and I can see non-zero address is loaded into t9, and JALR is executed successfully in that case. So I guess the problem is with the simulator not loading the table pointed by GP properly, but as stated above I just don't know what kind of procedure is to be called here (gdb doesn't help further here)... Thanks.
