Note .. should have included this .. the ELF section header table seems to be in a slightly different place between the two files : d$ elfdump -delv stage2-gcc/go/parse.o ELF Header ei_magic: { 0x7f, E, L, F } ei_class: ELFCLASS64 ei_data: ELFDATA2MSB ei_osabi: ELFOSABI_NONE ei_abiversion: 0 e_machine: EM_SPARCV9 e_version: EV_CURRENT e_type: ET_REL e_flags: [ EF_SPARCV9_TSO ] e_entry: 0 e_ehsize: 64 e_shstrndx: 1 e_shoff: 0x3b7cd8 e_shentsize: 64 e_shnum: 86 e_phoff: 0 e_phentsize: 0 e_phnum: 0 d$ elfdump -delv stage3-gcc/go/parse.o ELF Header ei_magic: { 0x7f, E, L, F } ei_class: ELFCLASS64 ei_data: ELFDATA2MSB ei_osabi: ELFOSABI_NONE ei_abiversion: 0 e_machine: EM_SPARCV9 e_version: EV_CURRENT e_type: ET_REL e_flags: [ EF_SPARCV9_TSO ] e_entry: 0 e_ehsize: 64 e_shstrndx: 1 e_shoff: 0x3b7cd0 e_shentsize: 64 e_shnum: 86 e_phoff: 0 e_phentsize: 0 e_phnum: 0 d$ So there I see 0x3b7cd8 in stage2 and 0x3b7cd0 in stage3. There are numerous other differences between the two files. Dennis