GNU objdump

If you, for whatever reason, need to disassemble non-x86 binary files, you usually look out for a disassembler. If there's nothing free available for your platform (e.g.: ARM) one of the few solutions may be buying something like IDA Pro.

But wait, if you only need to "analyze" a small portion (boot-sector, single routine, ...) and someone already ported GNUs GCC and bintools to your platform, using OBJDUMP may do the trick...

If "raw.bin" is your binary file, just typing


  objdump -d raw.bin
  objdump: raw.bin: File format not recognized
			
			

will not work. Objdump needs a file system object or file.

Just do it like this:


  # create an empty file
  touch empty.c

  # compile this empty file
  gcc -c -o empty.o empty.c

  # add binary as a raw section
  objcopy --add-section raw=raw.bin empty.o
	
  # remove ".comment" section to join
  objcopy -R .comment empty.o

  # now run objdump on it
  objdump -d empty.o

	




ASkr 8/2007