Re: ld behavior on different architectures

[Nick Clifton]

Hi Constantine,

> First of all, excuse me if i'm asking a naive question. I'm a complete 
> noob at using linker scripts (and generally ld), so please give me a 
> helping hand.

Certainly, although you are treading in a dark and mysterious region of 
programming.  I would suggest that you read up on linker scripts and 
linkers in general before you go much further.

> Does the linker's behavior change across different architectures? 

Yes.  For example the default alignment of sections may well be 
different with different architectures.

> Is is 
> possible that the 'boot' section is *not* at the beginning of the file 
> on amd64?

Not really no.  Given the linker script you presented the .boot section 
will be the first section in the amd64 image, (provided that there are 
some .boot sections in the input files used to create the image of 
course).  The best way to find out what is going on is to examine the 
built image by hand.  (Using the readelf tool with the -x switch may 
help here).

Cheers
  Nick