Gandhi woulda smacked you wrote:

> On Thu, 24 Jun 1999, Simon Burge wrote:
> 
> # matthew green wrote:
> # 
> # >    # Sections:
> # >    # Idx Name          Size      VMA       LMA       File off  Algn
> # >    #   0 .text         00120468  f0004000  f0004000  00000074  2**2
> # >    #                   CONTENTS, ALLOC, LOAD, READONLY, CODE
> # >    #   1 .rodata       000199cd  f0124468  f0124468  001204dc  2**3
> # >    #                   CONTENTS, ALLOC, LOAD, READONLY, DATA
> # >    #   2 .data         0001547c  f014de38  f014de38  00139eb0  2**3
> # >    #                   CONTENTS, ALLOC, LOAD, DATA
> # >    #   3 .bss          00023d54  f0163300  f0163300  0014f400  2**8
> # >    #                   ALLOC
> # >    #   4 .comment      00004f10  00000000  00000000  0014f400  2**0
> # >    #                   CONTENTS, READONLY
> # > interesting theory.  i'll only note that the above quoted text is from
> # > the "working kernel" set, and that they both (ie, working and non) do
> # > exactly the same thing here.
> # 
> # I would guess that since the BSS section doesn't have any contents
> # that the file offset wouldn't change between that segment and the
> # next segment.
> 
> But if the .bss section doesn't have any contents, why is its size
> registered at $23d54?

The BSS section still has a size and a virtual address, but just doesn't
take up any space in the file.  Think about the BSS column in the output
of size(1), objdump is similar but just telling us more info...

Simon.