Re: ELF - are .comment and .note sections needed? Inline syscalls?

Michael Riepe (riepe@ifwsn4.ifw.uni-hannover.de)
Thu, 17 Oct 1996 23:40:10 +0100


From: Tom Zerucha <root@deimos.ceddec.com>

> I was experimenting to see how small I could make an executable, and found
> that readelf showed .comment and .note sections in the code. It would
> sometimes show others too. Are they used for any purpose? strip won't
> remove them unless you specifically say --remove-section= for each one you
> want to remove.
[...]

I usually delete all .note and .comment sections from installed
binaries (including shared libraries) and I didn't have any problems
yet. It just saves me a couple of MBytes :)

You could also strip off the symbol table of your shared libraries - if
there weren't some braindead software configuration scripts out there
that read it in order to find out which functions are present...

Michael.

-- 
 Michael "Tired" Riepe <riepe@ifwsn4.ifw.uni-hannover.de>
 "Beware the storm that gathers here!" (The Prophet's Song)