[turbert]

Its been a while since I've touched this stuff but my recollection is the ELF interpreter (ldso, not the kernel) is responsible for everything after mapping the initial ELF's segments.

iirc execve maps pt_load segments from the program header, populates the aux vector on the stack, and jump straight to the ELF interpreter's entry point. Any linked objects are loaded in userspace by the elf interpreter. The kernel has no knowledge of the PLT/GOT.

[matheusmoreira]

That's right!

https://lwn.net/Articles/631631/

https://github.com/torvalds/linux/blob/master/fs/binfmt_elf....

Especially relevant for dynamic linkers is the AT_PHDR and AT_BASE auxiliary vector entries which provide the address of the executable's program header table and the address of the interpreter, respectively.

https://lwn.net/Articles/519085/