xref: /netbsd-src/usr.bin/elf2aout/elf2aout.1 (revision 6d322f2f4598f0d8a138f10ea648ec4fabe41f8b)
1.\"	$NetBSD: elf2aout.1,v 1.10 2012/03/05 10:57:18 njoly 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 ,
37which currently expect an a.out format kernel.
38.\" .Sh DIAGNOSTICS
39.Sh SEE ALSO
40.Xr elf2ecoff 1 ,
41.Xr ld 1 ,
42.Xr kvm 3 ,
43.Xr a.out 5 ,
44.Xr elf 5
45.Sh HISTORY
46.Nm
47was originally developed for
48.Nx Ns Tn /pmax
49by Ted Lemon
50and was first distributed with the pmax port of
51.Nx 1.1 .
52.Sh BUGS
53.Nm
54assumes there are no multiply-referenced symbols in the input ELF symbol
55section.
56It may be necessary to link with
57.Fl x
58to avoid such duplicate symbols.
59.Pp
60In some environments, the GNU binutils
61.Xr objcopy 1
62utility may be a better solution than
63.Nm .
64