How can I know what type of debug info is in an ELF object file?

c elf debug-symbols powerpc
johnj33 picture johnj33 · Aug 17, 2011 · Viewed 14.5k times · Source

I have an ELF object file. I want to know which type of debugging info it contains. It was compiled with the Diab compiler (C source) for the PPC architecture. I'm pretty sure it was built with debugging symbols.

I have tried extracting the debugging info with dwarfdump but I doesn't work so I guess the debugging information is not of type DWARF.

$ dwarfdump file.elf
No DWARF information present in file.elf

Using objdump to show debugging information comes up empty. 

$ objdump -g file.elf 
file.elf:     file format elf32-powerpc

Can it be that this ELF file does not contain debugging info even though the ELF file has sections called .debug_sfnames, .debug_srcinfo and .debug.srcinfo? Or is the debugging info stored in a format that objdump can't handle?

Answer

Lelouch Lamperouge picture Lelouch Lamperouge · Oct 18, 2011

You should probably use the nm

The nm utility shall display symbolic information appearing in the object file, executable file, or object-file library named by file. If no symbolic information is available for a valid input file, the nm utility shall report that fact, but not consider it an error condition.

Alternatively you can use tools like ldd to see what libraries are required by a binary.

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