Just a FYI. After a recent upgrade in debian testing, I was not able to build the kernel. I have a custom build of gcc, so I thought it was strange that I was getting something like this (took this from the web, as I don't have the error anymore with the work around, and currently doing a full build):
objdump: kernel/.tmp_signal.o: unable to initialize decompress status for section .debug_info objdump: kernel/.tmp_signal.o: unable to initialize decompress status for section .debug_info objdump: kernel/.tmp_signal.o: file format not recognized CC arch/x86/kernel/platform-quirks.o objdump: arch/x86/kernel/.tmp_ebda.o: unable to initialize decompress status for section .debug_info objdump: arch/x86/kernel/.tmp_ebda.o: unable to initialize decompress status for section .debug_info objdump: arch/x86/kernel/.tmp_ebda.o: file format not recognized objdump: mm/.tmp_swap_slots.o: unable to initialize decompress status for section .debug_info objdump: mm/.tmp_swap_slots.o: unable to initialize decompress status for section .debug_info objdump: mm/.tmp_swap_slots.o: file format not recognized The web showed this was an error in Arch Linux, with the latest libelf-0.175. I was confused to why an upgrade broke my build since I don't even use the distro gcc to build my kernel. But then realized it was objtool (after doing a make V=1). To make sure that this was the case, I used the gcc command (leaving it out here as it was very long) from a make V=1 to get an object file to play with. Then tried out: $ objdump -dr arch/x86/events/intel/.tmp_rapl.o Which dumped the contents of .tmp_rapl.o nicely. Then performed: $ ./tools/objtool/objtool orc generate --module --no-fp --retpoline "arch/x86/events/intel/.tmp_rapl.o"; And then tried again the objdump, but this time I got: $ objdump -dr arch/x86/events/intel/.tmp_rapl.o objdump: arch/x86/events/intel/.tmp_rapl.o: unable to initialize decompress status for section .debug_info objdump: arch/x86/events/intel/.tmp_rapl.o: unable to initialize decompress status for section .debug_info objdump: arch/x86/events/intel/.tmp_rapl.o: file format not recognized The work around I did was that I found an older libelf on another box, copied it to this box and made the symlink point to it. Low and behold, objtool worked again. Anyone else stumble across this? -- Steve