What do the .eh_frame and .eh_frame_hdr sections store, exactly?

Question

I know that, when using languages that support exceptions, such as C++, additional information must be provided to the runtime environment to describe the call frames that m

Answer 1

Please, see cfi-directives

It should cover history and theory of most of the sections in question.

About eh_frame, it contains exception unwinding and source language information. Each entry in this section is represented by single CFI (call frame information )

see, eh_frame in linuxfoundation

eh_frame_hdr, is used by c++ runtime code to access the eh_frame. That means, it contains the pointer and binary search table to efficiently retrieve the information from eh_frame.

Now, in case you want to see how you read/write this sections then I suggest take a look at following linker code.

(look for EhFrame.cpp, EhFrameHdr.cpp and EhFrameReader.cpp )

Good luck !!