Linux ELF Format Tutorial

Course details

This is a beginner course on understanding the Structure of anELF Fileused byObject, Relocatable and Executable files in Linux. The course takes example of small C programs and used tools like readlelf and objdump to view the format and contents of the ELF object files created to explain the ELFconcepts. The student is shown how the utility readelf can be used to dive into a ELFfile and see its various sections.

There is also information on how to read ELF Files programmatically, using a library called libelf. Alot of tools have been written using this libelf library and this lecture is a short introduction on it usage, and an example of how to read the ELFheader using its APIs.

The intent of this introductory course is to get the student excited about the possibilities of understanding and debugging ELFfiles, which the student can use to write better programs.