1elf-arch(1) General Commands Manual elf-arch(1)
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6 elf-arch - recognize architecture of an ELF executable/shlib
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9 elf-arch <file>
10 says the arch of given binary
11 elf-arch -a <arch> <file>
13 checks if <file> matches ABI <arch>
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16 elf-arch detects the kernel ABI needed to run a given binary, and
17 prints its Debian arch name. This doesn't necessarily mean the arch
18 can actually run that program/library: markings available in the ELF
19 header are pretty much restricted to just word width, endianness and
20 instruction set family. Architectures can also differ by the set of
21 syscalls they use (although these can usually be mixed) or required CPU
22 instructions; you can't generally distinguish between those other than
23 trying to run the program.
24 The difference usually shows in the kernel refusing to run a binary vs
26 executing it and crashing at runtime.
27 Thus, as far as ELF markings are concerned, there's often a set of De‐
29 bian architectures which are aliases for the same kernel arch.
30 -a <arch>
32 With this option, elf-arch instead of printing the detected architec‐
33 ture will check if <arch> matches one of aliases for the file, and re‐
34 turn an exit code: 0 if there's a plausible match, non-zero if the
35 given arch won't even try executing that file.
36 elf-arch(1)