golang/go · error

%s and %s symbols must be in the same section

Error message

%s and %s symbols must be in the same section

What it means

loadPETable extracts a byte table from a PE (Windows) binary by slicing the section data between a start symbol's Value and an end symbol's Value. Because the slice is computed against a single section's Data(), both symbols must live in the same PE section; if they do not, the offsets are meaningless and could even panic on a bad slice. The library therefore refuses the operation rather than return garbage. This fires during pclntab/funcdata extraction from a Go PE binary (used by go tool nm, objdump, pprof).

Source

Thrown at src/cmd/internal/objfile/pe.go:179

		if len(f.Sections) < int(s.SectionNumber) {
			return nil, fmt.Errorf("symbol %s: section number %d is larger than max %d", name, s.SectionNumber, len(f.Sections))
		}
		return s, nil
	}
	return nil, fmt.Errorf("no %s symbol found", name)
}

func loadPETable(f *pe.File, sname, ename string) ([]byte, error) {
	ssym, err := findPESymbol(f, sname)
	if err != nil {
		return nil, err
	}
	esym, err := findPESymbol(f, ename)
	if err != nil {
		return nil, err
	}
	if ssym.SectionNumber != esym.SectionNumber {
		return nil, fmt.Errorf("%s and %s symbols must be in the same section", sname, ename)
	}
	sect := f.Sections[ssym.SectionNumber-1]
	data, err := sect.Data()
	if err != nil {
		return nil, err
	}
	return data[ssym.Value:esym.Value], nil
}

func (f *peFile) goarch() string {
	switch f.pe.Machine {
	case pe.IMAGE_FILE_MACHINE_I386:
		return "386"
	case pe.IMAGE_FILE_MACHINE_AMD64:
		return "amd64"
	case pe.IMAGE_FILE_MACHINE_ARM64:
		return "arm64"
	default:

View on GitHub (pinned to b6b368adc5)

Solutions

1. Rebuild the Windows binary with a stock 'go build' and avoid objcopy/manual section manipulation.
2. Confirm the binary was produced by the Go toolchain for GOOS=windows and has not been stripped of pclntab.
3. If you only need symbols, try 'go tool nm' on the original object file before linking instead of the final .exe.

// data, err := loadPETable(pe, "runtime.pclntab", "runtime.epclntab")
// if err != nil {
//     if strings.Contains(err.Error(), "must be in the same section") {
//         // binary is unsuitable for table extraction; fall back to symbol-only tooling
//     }
//     return err
// }

When it happens

Trigger: Calling loadPETable (directly or via pclntab loading) where findPESymbol(sname).SectionNumber != findPESymbol(ename).SectionNumber — e.g. 'runtime.pclntab' and 'runtime.epclntab' resolved to different PE sections.

Common situations: Inspecting a Windows .exe that was post-processed by objcopy/stripping tools that re-laid-out sections, a corrupted PE binary, or a hand-crafted/merged object file. Also possible if the wrong start/end symbol pair is requested for the binary's Go version.

Related errors

• symbol %s: invalid section number %d
• no %s symbol found
• pe file format not recognized
• invalid section number in symbol table
• text section not found

AI-assisted analysis of golang/go@b6b368adc5 (2026-08-12). Data as JSON: /api/errors/9a61946f5ad2cb94. Report an issue: GitHub.