Effects of removing all symbol table and relocation information from an executable?
assembly, executable, gcc, linux
Solution
It seems pretty clear that removing relocation information would interfere with ASLR.
However, I've taken a look at `man strip` on a couple of my systems, and none of them suggest that `strip` does (or indeed can?) remove relocation information. It is mainly about removing debugging symbols.
Problem
Compilation using `gcc -s` and Unix `strip` remove all symbol table and relocation information from an executable (making it smaller in size). Could this ever affect the functioning of the executable? Do some operating systems which perform Address Space Layout Randomization (ASLR) need this information? If not, why keep them around in the first place? A slightly-detailed overview of the above would be helpful.