Specifying Segment Attributes

[Prasad Venkata Boddupalli <bprasad at CS dot Arizona dot EDU>]

Hello,

I am writing a loader for a multi-threaded processor in which multiple
instances of an application run on different threads. Multiple
instances, besides their data segments mapped to a different physical
location also have a shared memory. The loader needs to recognize this
shared segment in the elf-executable. From the elf specification and the
linker script command language, I realized that one of the ways of
specifying the segment attribute as 'shared' is to use the 'PHDRS' command
and specify the attribute as part of the 'flags' of that segment.

Is there any other way as the use of PHDRS command will force one to
describe all segments ?

thanks,
Prasad.