A dynamic loader is an executable ? that is used to load a program so that the program’s main can start executing. For some details, check out t he section on ELFs and System here, and here (https://linux-audit.com/elf-binaries-on-linux-understanding-and-analysis/#why-learn-the-details-of-elf) and here

Dynamically linked executables

Basically, dynamically linked executables are interpreted. An interpreter has to read the contents of the elf, mmap the sections in the binary to the RAM before executing the main section of the executable. Each executable hardcodes the path to the interpreter in the binary, under the INTERP entry, under the dynamic section of the library.

This interpreter is the linux ld libary (/usr/lib/ld-linux-x86-64.so.2, etc)

Statically linked executables

Staticalyl linked executables do not link to libc statically. When run, they do not have an mmap section loading libc in their runtime memory. To generate a statically linked executable , look in here

dlopen https://linux.die.net/man/3/dlopen - open dll file

Understanding ELFs

A lot of it is documented in [these](https://stffrdh q rn.github.io/hardware/embedded/openrisc/2019/11/29/relocs.html) posts.

https://www.altoros.com/blog/golang-internals-part-5-the-runtime-bootstrap-process/ shows how to start debugging ELF’s. objdump -f elf-file shows the start address of Execution in an ELF file.

BFD - binary format description (+ library) is an abstraction library to work on object files, irrespective of the object file format. BFD is used by readelf.

https://zig.news/gw1/learning-about-elf-with-zig-22eb Is a blog post on learning about ELF’s with Zig.