Description of problem: Compiling MadWifi (Linux driver for Atheros chipset) involves linking against a closed source binary called HAL (hardware absraction layer). The binaries are compiled for FreeBSD by a FreeBSD developer who has access to Atheros documentation and source code. Stating a few days ago, the build is failing because ld doesn't understand the binary: LD [M] /home/proski/src/madwifi/ath_hal/ath_hal.o /home/proski/src/madwifi/ath_hal/i386-elf.hal.o: file not recognized: File format not recognized It's not just ld. Other tools fail to understand the binary: $ nm i386-elf.hal.o nm: i386-elf.hal.o: File format not recognized Exactly the same binary is recognized on Fedora Core 6: $ nm i386-elf.hal.o |wc -l 428 Version-Release number of selected component (if applicable): 2.17.50.0.12-2 How reproducible: Always Steps to Reproduce: 1. Download MadWifi sources: svn co http://svn.madwifi.org/trunk madwifi 2. Try to compile it: cd madwifi make Actual results: Build fails with the message "File format not recognized" Expected results: Build succeeds Additional info: The kernels distributed with Fedora may have other issues, so please use "make -k" or run make in the ath_hal directory to avoid irrelevant problems.
Created attachment 149240 [details] The problematic file, compressed with bzip2
The problem can be reproduced with binutils-2.17.50.0.12 from the binutils SRPM without Fedora patches. However, the problem cannot be reproduced with today's CVS version of binutils. I think binutils needs to be updated to the CVS version. It's not like we are distributing official releases anyway.
*** Bug 230977 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
http://sources.redhat.com/ml/binutils/2007-01/msg00045.html http://sources.redhat.com/ml/binutils/2007-03/msg00115.html
Fixed in binutils-2.17.50.0.12-3 in rawhide.