From http://sourceware.org/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=4007 Something completely different, when using the linux patch I posted on LKM, where a new program header is created for this section, and is removed if i want to get rid of the section .realmode completely because I want to generate the old target, you can ask me the question: [etienne@localhost linux-2.6.20-gujin]$ objcopy -R .note -R .comment -R .realmode -S vmlinux vmlinux.tmp BFD: vmlinux: warning: Empty loadable segment detected, is this intentional ? [etienne@localhost linux-2.6.20-gujin]$ My answer is that it is not needed to keep this empty loadable segment, you can strip it. I do not care of the warning because that command is used "-O binary" by Linux Makefile and does not produce the warning.
It is informational, nothing more.