golang/go · error

corrupt .ARM.attributes (section name not NUL-terminated)

Error message

corrupt .ARM.attributes (section name not NUL-terminated)

What it means

Within `.ARM.attributes`, after the `'A'` byte, the section is a sequence of subsections each beginning with a 4-byte length and a NUL-terminated subsection name (e.g. `aeabi`). If no NUL byte terminates the name within the subsection's declared bounds, the name is unparseable and the linker aborts rather than read past the subsection boundary.

Solutions

1. Rebuild the ARM object from source with a stable GCC/Clang.
2. `go clean -cache && go build -a`.
3. Validate with `readelf -A <obj>`; discard objects it cannot parse.
4. Reinstall the ARM cross-toolchain if objects are consistently malformed.

for obj in $(find build -name '*.o'); do
  readelf -A "$obj" >/dev/null 2>&1 || echo "corrupt ARM attributes (name) in $obj"
done

set +e
go build ./...
rc=$?
set -e
if [ $rc -ne 0 ]; then
  go clean -cache && go build -a ./...
fi

When it happens

Trigger: An object whose `.ARM.attributes` subsection length is wrong (too short, cutting off the name) or whose name field is not NUL-terminated; a truncated or corrupted attributes section from a faulty assembler; bit-flip corruption in a cached object.

Common situations: Object from a broken nightly toolchain; cache corruption after a crash; object transferred with a tool that altered bytes (encoding conversion).

Related errors

• .ARM.attributes has unexpected format %c
• could not parse .ARM.attributes
• cannot find .go.fipsinfo
• invalid pointers found in .go.fipsinfo
• loadelf

AI-assisted analysis of golang/go@b6b368adc5 (2026-08-12). Data as JSON: /api/errors/e4c9a54f7ba2dc29. Report an issue: GitHub.

Appendix: source

Thrown at src/cmd/link/internal/loadelf/ldelf.go:203

// file-level attribute with tag Tag_VFP_arch and value 1). Unfortunately the
// format used means that we have to parse all of the file-level attributes to
// find the one we are looking for. This format is slightly documented in "ELF
// for the ARM Architecture" but mostly this is derived from reading the source
// to gold and readelf.
func parseArmAttributes(e binary.ByteOrder, data []byte) (found bool, ehdrFlags uint32, err error) {
	found = false
	if data[0] != 'A' {
		return false, 0, fmt.Errorf(".ARM.attributes has unexpected format %c\n", data[0])
	}
	data = data[1:]
	for len(data) != 0 {
		sectionlength := e.Uint32(data)
		sectiondata := data[4:sectionlength]
		data = data[sectionlength:]

		nulIndex := bytes.IndexByte(sectiondata, 0)
		if nulIndex < 0 {
			return false, 0, fmt.Errorf("corrupt .ARM.attributes (section name not NUL-terminated)\n")
		}
		name := string(sectiondata[:nulIndex])
		sectiondata = sectiondata[nulIndex+1:]

		if name != "aeabi" {
			continue
		}
		for len(sectiondata) != 0 {
			subsectiontag, sz := binary.Uvarint(sectiondata)
			subsectionsize := e.Uint32(sectiondata[sz:])
			subsectiondata := sectiondata[sz+4 : subsectionsize]
			sectiondata = sectiondata[subsectionsize:]

			if subsectiontag != TagFile {
				continue
			}
			attrList := elfAttributeList{data: subsectiondata}
			for !attrList.done() {

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