Compiling Assembly code

Question

I'm trying to compile an ASM program I wrote with NASM and the "ld" command from DJGPP. This is the code for the batch file I'm using to compiling it:

@echo off
set path=C:\NASM;%PATH%
nasm -f aout -o start.o start.asm
ld -T link.ld -o kernel.bin start.o

But when I run the file I get:

start.o: file not recognised: File format not recognized

What, in my build file, have I done wrong to cause this error message?

EDIT

This is my link.ld file:

OUTPUT_FORMAT("binary")
ENTRY(start)
phys = 0x00100000;
SECTIONS
{
  .text phys : AT(phys) {
    code = .;
    *(.text)
    *(.rodata)
    . = ALIGN(4096);
  }
  .data : AT(phys + (data - code))
  {
    data = .;
    *(.data)
    . = ALIGN(4096);
  }
  .bss : AT(phys + (bss - code))
  {
    bss = .;
    *(.bss)
    . = ALIGN(4096);
  }
  end = .;
}

EDIT

Nothing else is working, so here is the code for my ASM file (I was creating kernel for an Operating System I've been working on):

[BITS 32]
global start
start:
    mov esp, _sys_stack
    jmp stublet

ALIGN 4
mboot:
    MULTIBOOT_PAGE_ALIGN    equ 1<<0
    MULTIBOOT_MEMORY_INFO   equ 1<<1
    MULTIBOOT_AOUT_KLUDGE   equ 1<<16
    MULTIBOOT_HEADER_MAGIC  equ 0x1BADB002
    MULTIBOOT_HEADER_FLAGS  equ MULTIBOOT_PAGE_ALIGN | MULTIBOOT_MEMORY_INFO |         MULTIBOOT_AOUT_KLUDGE
    MULTIBOOT_CHECKSUM  equ -(MULTIBOOT_HEADER_MAGIC + MULTIBOOT_HEADER_FLAGS)
    EXTERN code, bss, end

    dd MULTIBOOT_HEADER_MAGIC
    dd MULTIBOOT_HEADER_FLAGS
    dd MULTIBOOT_CHECKSUM

    dd mboot
    dd code
    dd bss
    dd end
    dd start

stublet:
    jmp $

SECTION .bss
    resb 8192
_sys_stack:

Answer 1

You are missing text section in the code file:

[BITS 32]
SECTION .text
global start
...

For the object format try -f coff since that seems to be the right format for DJCPP (thanks @ninjalj):

valid output formats for -f are (`*' denotes default):
  * bin       flat-form binary files (e.g. DOS .COM, .SYS)
    ith       Intel hex
    srec      Motorola S-records
    aout      Linux a.out object files
    aoutb     NetBSD/FreeBSD a.out object files
    coff      COFF (i386) object files (e.g. DJGPP for DOS)
    elf32     ELF32 (i386) object files (e.g. Linux)
    elf       ELF (short name for ELF32) 
    elf64     ELF64 (x86_64) object files (e.g. Linux)
    as86      Linux as86 (bin86 version 0.3) object files
    obj       MS-DOS 16-bit/32-bit OMF object files
    win32     Microsoft Win32 (i386) object files
    win64     Microsoft Win64 (x86-64) object files
    rdf       Relocatable Dynamic Object File Format v2.0
    ieee      IEEE-695 (LADsoft variant) object file format
    macho32   NeXTstep/OpenStep/Rhapsody/Darwin/MacOS X (i386) object files
    macho     MACHO (short name for MACHO32)
    macho64   NeXTstep/OpenStep/Rhapsody/Darwin/MacOS X (x86_64) object files
    dbg       Trace of all info passed to output stage

I have no solution for you for DJCPP, but I was able to compile and link this on my 64-bit Linux (with added .text section) as follows:

~$ nasm -f elf64 start.asm
~$ ld -T link.ld -o kernel.bin start.o

Answer 2

Have you tried nasm -f coff?

From nasm -hf output:

coff      COFF (i386) object files (e.g. DJGPP for DOS)