xref: /netbsd/usr.bin/elf2aout/elf2aout.1 (revision bf9ec67e)
1.\"	$NetBSD: elf2aout.1,v 1.7 2001/12/01 19:05:04 wiz Exp $
2.\"
3.\" Copyright 1996 The Board of Trustees of The Leland Stanford
4.\" Junior University. All Rights Reserved.
5.\"
6.\" Author: Jonathan Stone
7.\"
8.\" Permission to use, copy, modify, and distribute this
9.\" software and its documentation for any purpose and without
10.\" fee is hereby granted, provided that the above copyright
11.\" notice and the above authorship notice appear in all copies.
12.\" Stanford University makes no representations about the suitability
13.\" of this software for any purpose.  It is provided "as is" without
14.\" express or implied warranty.
15.Dd September 30, 1996
16.Dt ELF2AOUT 1
17.Os
18.Sh NAME
19.Nm elf2aout
20.Nd convert a NetBSD ELF-format executable to NetBSD a.out format
21.Sh SYNOPSIS
22.Nm elf2aout
23.Ar elf-file
24.Ar aout-file
25.Sh DESCRIPTION
26Reads a fully-linked ELF executable (such as a  linked kernel)
27and produces an equivalent a.out format executable file.
28.Pp
29The
30.Nm
31utility is used to convert native
32.Nx
33ELF binaries
34to a.out format, for compatibility with bootblocks and kernel-reading
35utilities like
36.Xr kvm 3
37and
38.Xr kvm_mkdb 8 ,
39which currently expect an a.out format kernel.
40.\" .Sh DIAGNOSTICS
41.Sh SEE ALSO
42.Xr elf2ecoff 1 ,
43.Xr ld 1 ,
44.Xr kvm 3 ,
45.Xr a.out 5 ,
46.Xr elf 5 ,
47.Xr kvm_mkdb 8
48.Sh HISTORY
49.Nm
50was originally developed for
51.Nx Ns Tn /pmax
52by Ted Lemon
53and was first distributed with the pmax port of
54.Nx 1.1 .
55.Sh BUGS
56.Nm
57assumes there are no multiply-referenced symbols in the input ELF symbol
58section.   It may be necessary to link with
59.Fl x
60to avoid such duplicate symbols.
61.Pp
62In some environments, the GNU binutils
63.Xr objcopy 1
64utility may be a better solution than
65.Nm "" .
66