Where is the linux kernel elf file located? If the Linux kernel by itself is an ELF file, where can I find its ELF file?

On many systems you can find a compressed kernel in `/boot`, typically named `vmlinuz-$(uname -r)`. The ELF executable contained therein can be extracted using the `extract-vmlinux` script, available in the kernel source code:


extract-vmlinux /boot/vmlinuz-$(uname -r) > vmlinux


The result is an ELF file:


$ file vmlinux
vmlinux: ELF 64-bit LSB executable, x86-64, version 1 (SYSV), statically linked, BuildID[sha1]=b28d236fad2fb7d0eb9bbe6eac766fb04406da3f, stripped


(on x86-64).

If you’re building the kernel,


make vmlinux


will produce the ELF executable.