sstrip1

Usage

Overview

sstrip removes the content at the end of an ELF file that does not contribute to a program's memory image.

sstrip modifies the named file in place, rather than outputting new contents to another location.

Options

-z, --zeroes

Attempt to also strip trailing zero bytes from the file.

--help

Display help and exit.

--version

Display version information and exit.

Notes

sstrip works by identifying the parts of an ELF binary file that are loaded into memory when executed, and then truncating the file to remove everything beyond that point. Typically this means removing the section header table and various other tables that are not needed by the program loader.

A shared-object library stripped in this fashion will still be usable by the dynamic linker, but not by the static linker.

The use of the option to delete trailing zero bytes can sometimes cause a binary to not function (depending on which ELF structure was truncated as a result). Since this feature typically reduces a file size by only a handful of bytes anyway, it is only useful in rare circumstances.