What is the difference between vmlinux and vmlinuz

Improve this answer. Do a verbose kernel build and search for the files This approach can give some insight, will never get out of date, and will help you to easily find which part of the build system is doing what.

Now, inspect f. For example, on v4. S contains:. At: AR built-in. Call chain summary: objcopy -O binary -R. Nan Xiao Nan Xiao 1, 5 5 gold badges 17 17 silver badges 27 27 bronze badges. Behnam Dezfouli Behnam Dezfouli 3 3 bronze badges.

Sign up or log in Sign up using Google. Sign up using Facebook. Sign up using Email and Password. Post as a guest Name. Email Required, but never shown. The Overflow Blog. Does ES6 make JavaScript frameworks obsolete? For x86, thought that's not my expertise I think you'll find a target called bzImage. For ARM architectures, some systems boot zImage, others boot uImage which is a Linux kernel image packaged in a header that the U-Boot bootloader recognizes.

Even if you remove the U-Boot header, the image is a composite image. That is, it's not an ELF file, and it's not a pure. It is a concatenation of several binary blobs, which can include kernel configuration information, the kernel itself, almost always compressed, and often a piece of runnable code ie.

I'm less familiar with x86, but even on that architecture, the kernel boot image the one that you boot is a composite image containing several components, ie. One good way to see what is happening is to compile your kernel with verbose mode, and then watch the final steps to see how the images are manipulated. Linker takes relocatable object files and command line arguments in order to generate an executable object file. To produce an executable file the Linker has to perform the symbol resolution, and Relocation.

Check your make file to find out how vmlinux is prepared. This will shed some light. It is not necessary that if vmlinux. Stack Overflow for Teams — Collaborate and share knowledge with a private group.

Create a free Team What is Teams? Collectives on Stack Overflow. About the difference and connection of vmlinux, vmlinuz, bzImage, zImage. FaceBook Share. Write My Article. Download article as html. As today's kernels are way over KB, this is usually the preferred way.

Skip to content file format kernel linux While browsing through the Kernel Makefiles, I found these terms. Best Answer. The raw vmlinux file may be useful for debugging purposes.