This is just an FYI written from a position of ignorance: I may have got it wrong, and my build environment too piecemeal to matter to anyone else; but what I saw was weird enough to be worth mentioning, in case it saves someone some time.
I usually build and test on mmotm weekly rather linux-next daily. No problem with 5.9-rc3-mm1 from 2020-09-04, nor with 5.9-rc5, but (on two machines) 5.9-rc5-mm1 from 2020-09-13 could not link vmlinux: AR init/built-in.a LD vmlinux.o ld: warning: init/main.o has a corrupt section with a size (7472747368732e00) larger than the file size ld: warning: init/main.o has a corrupt section with a size (7472747368732e00) larger than the file size ld: warning: init/main.o has a corrupt section with a size (7472747368732e00) larger than the file size ld: warning: init/main.o has a corrupt section with a size (7472747368732e00) larger than the file size ld: init/built-in.a: member init/main.o in archive is not an object make[1]: *** [vmlinux] Error 1 make: *** [__sub-make] Error 2 On the third machine, a more recent installation, but using the same gcc and the same binutils, I could build the same config successfully. init/main.o was the same size on each (49216 bytes), but diff of hd of the good against the bad showed: 2702,2709c2702,2709 < 00bfc0 000001db 00000001 00000003 00000000 >................< < 00bfd0 00000000 00000000 0000b316 00000000 >................< < 00bfe0 00000018 00000000 00000000 00000000 >................< < 00bff0 00000001 00000000 00000008 00000000 >................< < 00c000 000001ee 00000004 00000040 00000000 >........@.......< < 00c010 00000000 00000000 0000b330 00000000 >........0.......< < 00c020 00000090 00000000 0000002d 00000030 >........-...0...< < 00c030 00000008 00000000 00000018 00000000 >................< --- > 00bfc0 00000000 00000000 000001f1 00000000 >................< > 00bfd0 79732e00 6261746d 74732e00 62617472 >..symtab..strtab< > 00bfe0 68732e00 74727473 2e006261 616c6572 >..shstrtab..rela< > 00bff0 7865742e 722e0074 2e616c65 61746164 >.text..rela.data< > 00c000 73622e00 722e0073 5f616c65 6172745f >..bss..rela__tra< > 00c010 6f706563 73746e69 7274705f 722e0073 >cepoints_ptrs..r< > 00c020 2e616c65 74617473 635f6369 2e6c6c61 >ela.static_call.< > 00c030 74786574 65722e00 692e616c 2e74696e >text..rela.init.< and 217 other .os in the build tree also "corrupted". CONFIG_HAVE_STATIC_CALL=y CONFIG_HAVE_STATIC_CALL_INLINE=y stand out as new in the .config for 5.9-rc5-mm1, and references to objtool in static_call.h and static_call_types.h took me to tools/objtool/Makefile, with its use of libelf. I've copied over files of the newer libelf (0.168) to the failing machines, which are now building the 5.9-rc5-mm1 vmlinux correctly. It looks as if CONFIG_HAVE_STATIC_CALL=y depends on a newer libelf than I had before (0.155), and should either insist on a minimum version, or else be adjusted to work with older versions. Hope this helps, Hugh
