RE: vmlinux parse error 2.6.12.5

[Nicolas Pitre <nico at cam dot org>]

On Thu, 25 Aug 2005, Dave Korn wrote:

>   I'm not sure yet how to test for the section size being zero, but I just
> don't think ASSERT is up to the job.  It may or may not still be possible in
> the linker script, or it may need to be done in the external build machinery
> (e.g. objcopy out the section to a raw binary and test the file size, or
> similary).

I don't know about your setup but ...

I am using binutils version 2.15 from a build of crosstools:

/opt/crosstool/arm-softfloat-linux-gnu/gcc-3.4.1-glibc-2.3.3/bin/arm-softfloat-linux-gnu-ld -v
GNU ld version 2.15

Compiling the current Linux kernel version 2.6.13-rc7 for Mainstone:

  [...]
  LD      init/built-in.o
  LD      .tmp_vmlinux1
  KSYM    .tmp_kallsyms1.S
  AS      .tmp_kallsyms1.o
  LD      .tmp_vmlinux2
  KSYM    .tmp_kallsyms2.S
  AS      .tmp_kallsyms2.o
  LD      vmlinux
  SYSMAP  System.map
  SYSMAP  .tmp_System.map
  OBJCOPY arch/arm/boot/Image
  Kernel: arch/arm/boot/Image is ready

Now, editing arch/arm/mach-pxa/mainstone.c and commenting out the whole 
MACHINE_START record at the bottom of the file and recompiling:

  [...]
  LD      init/built-in.o
  LD      .tmp_vmlinux1
/opt/crosstool/arm-softfloat-linux-gnu/gcc-3.4.1-glibc-2.3.3/bin/arm-softfloat-linux-gnu-ld:
 no machine record defined
make: *** [.tmp_vmlinux1] Error 1

So in this case everything works as expected for me at least.  Of course 
uncommenting the machine record in arch/arm/mach-pxa/mainstone.c results 
in a compiling again kernel.  And given the time the ASSERT has been 
present in the kernel tree it certainly must have worked fine for most 
people (and for those who had the problem then moving to binutils >= 
2.15 seemed to have done some good too).


Nicolas