Thanks Ralf for your insights ! My board has a boot loader (rom) that enforce/restricts the sections in the elf header, hence I cannot use the default linker script that comes wit the kernel(arch/mips/). I'm refereing the ld manual at http://www.gnu.org/manual/ld-2.9.1/html_mono/ld.html I think your reply could be put as a howto/faqs in http://www.linux-mips.org (for the global symbols used in linux kernel). Thanks, Indu On Tue, 24 Jun 2003 ralf@linux-mips.org wrote: > On Tue, Jun 24, 2003 at 06:00:16AM -0400, ik@cyberspace.org wrote: > > > I'm porting Linux kernel to a mips board for which I need to understand > > the various symbols used in the kernel. > > > > For example what is the use of the following symbols > > `__init_begin' > > `__init_end' > > `__initcall_start > > `__initcall_end' > > `_ftext' > > `__setup_start' > > `__setup_end' > > > > I'm not good in these linker scripts... any help pointers would be of > > great help to me ! (I'm referrring gnu ld manual pages ... still have a > > long way to go :( > > You'll find more information in the GNU info pages than in the man page > which is sort of an option summary only. Of course both only cover ld, > not the way it's actually being used in Linux. > > _ftext is the start of the executable kernel code. __init_begin and > __init_end wrap the kernel's initialization code which will be freed after > full initialization. See arch/mips/mm/init.c:__init_begin() and > arch/mips/mm/init.c:free_initmem() for how it's used. > > __initcall_start and __initcall_end are used for the initcalls in > init/main.c. See how those symbols are used in init/main.c:do_initcalls(). > __setup_start and __setup_end are used in similarly obscure way to mark > start and end of the .setup.init section; see init/main.c:checksetup() > and <linux/init.h> for it's use. > > Ralf >
