From: longshot@att2.cs.mankato.msus.edu (Erik Green) Subject: Executable Magic numbers Date: 2 May 1992 03:51:03 GMT
Greetings, all -
I have a question or two: Does _anyone_ out there know what
magic numbers/unique ID signature are on/in GCC 2.1 binaries?
I have a PD version of 'file' I've gotten compiled, and it
recognizes quite a lot of file types out of the box, including
gcc 1.40 and previous executables - it even tells me whether or
not a given executable is stripped, just like it's supposed to.
The only problems are:
1)It doesn't line up it's output when called on multiple files in two
neat columns - I'm about ready to write this off as another screen
formatting bug.
2) It thinks any program compiled with GCC 2.1 is of type 'data' - its
way of saying it doesn't know what the file is.
If anyone knows a numeric signature/ byte offset combination that definitively
says "Linux GCC 2.1 executable", please mail it to me. Different sigs
for shared and static executables would be a bonus, but I have little hope
on this point.
Also, has anyone else gotten a /etc/magic file put together? I took a look
around to the various sites, but the TODO lists I found were pretty
antiquated. I posted a few days back saying I'd compile and upload
Lharc and zoo, but when I looked around, I found that lharc was already
on banjo.concert.net, and someone else had said they'd post zoo,
so I decided to forget it. It's getting to be very hard to contribute
to Linux something someone else hasn't already done. Am I going to
have to start doing work on the kernel, or what? :-)
*sigh* Someday I'll learn to make short posts....
-Erik