Effects of removing all symbol table and relocation information from an executable?

Question

Compilation using gcc -s and Unix strip remove all symbol table and relocation information from an executable (making it smaller in size).

Could this ever affect the functioning of the executable? Do some operating systems which perform Address Space Layout Randomization (ASLR) need this information? If not, why keep them around in the first place?

A slightly-detailed overview of the above would be helpful.

Answer 1

It seems pretty clear that removing relocation information would interfere with ASLR.

However, I've taken a look at man strip on a couple of my systems, and none of them suggest that strip does (or indeed can?) remove relocation information. It is mainly about removing debugging symbols.