using readelf to get info about an executable file

readelf description

from the man entry for readelf:

DESCRIPTION readelf displays information about one or more ELF format object files. The options control what particular information to display.

elffile… are the object files to be examined. 32-bit and 64-bit ELF files are supported, as are archives containing ELF files.

This program performs a similar function to objdump but it goes into more detail and it exists independently of the BFD library, so if there is a bug in BFD then readelf will not be affected.

elf definition

and regarding the meaning of ELF… it stands for Executable and Linkable Format
check this excerpt from wikipedia about the Executable and Linkable Format files

In computing, the Executable and Linkable Format (ELF, formerly named Extensible Linking Format), is a common standard file format for executable files, object code, shared libraries, and core dumps.

First published in the specification for the application binary interface (ABI) of the Unix operating system version named System V Release 4 (SVR4),[2] and later in the Tool Interface Standard,[1] it was quickly accepted among different vendors of Unix systems.

In 1999, it was chosen as the standard binary file format for Unix and Unix-like systems on x86 processors by the 86open project.

for a very nice article on ELF you can check this post The 101 of ELF files on Linux: Understanding and Analysis

back to readelf

to check the header of a file to obtain general info we can do the following

# let's check the elf header of -jump-, a small program in asm I did to learn asm_x64
you@hostname:~$ readelf --file-header ./jump
ELF Header:
  Magic:   7f 45 4c 46 02 01 01 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 
  Class:                             ELF64
  Data:                              2s complement, little endian
  Version:                           1 (current)
  OS/ABI:                            UNIX - System V
  ABI Version:                       0
  Type:                              EXEC (Executable file)
  Machine:                           Advanced Micro Devices X86-64
  Version:                           0x1
  Entry point address:               0x401040
  Start of program headers:          64 (bytes into file)
  Start of section headers:          15336 (bytes into file)
  Flags:                             0x0
  Size of this header:               64 (bytes)
  Size of program headers:           56 (bytes)
  Number of program headers:         11
  Size of section headers:           64 (bytes)
  Number of section headers:         36
  Section header string table index: 35

among a few entries we can see that the entry point is located at address 0x401040

if we want to see where main starts, we can look for it among the elf symbols like this

you@hostname:~$ readelf --symbols ./jump | grep main
     2: 0000000000000000     0 FUNC    GLOBAL DEFAULT  UND __libc_start_main@GLIBC_2.2.5 (2)
    61: 0000000000000000     0 FUNC    GLOBAL DEFAULT  UND __libc_start_main@@GLIBC_
    71: 0000000000401130     0 NOTYPE  GLOBAL DEFAULT   13 main

in entry line 71, we can see that main starts at address 0x401130 a little away from the entry point we saw above,0x401040