Seattle Band 'netcat' Releases Album as a Linux Kernel Module

Instead of letting the C-compiler compile a huge array, you can use objcopy.

    objcopy -I binary -O elf32-littlearm -B arm /etc/passwd passwd.o
    cc    -c -o testme.o testme.c
    cc   testme.o passwd.o   -o testme

--- testme.c ---

    #include <unistd.h>
    #include <stdlib.h>
    #include <stdio.h>
    
    /* "address" of symbol _size is the size of the objcopied file */
    extern void    _binary__etc_passwd_size;
    /* ..._start is the first byte of data */
    extern char    _binary__etc_passwd_start;
    /* ..._end is the one following the last byte of data */
    extern char    _binary__etc_passwd_end;
    
    int
    main(int argc, char **argv)
    {
        /* "address" of the symbol ..._size is the size */
        /* you could also do size = &..._end - &..._start; */
    	size_t size = &_binary__etc_passwd_size;
    
    	printf("Dumping /etc/passwd, in memory @%p, size is %ld.\n",
    		&_binary__etc_passwd_start, size);
    	write(1,&_binary__etc_passwd_start,size);
    	exit(0);
    }

--- demo ---

    chris@raspberrypi ~/tmp/objcopy_to_carray $ ./testme 
    Dumping /etc/passwd, in memory @0x106b0, size is 607.
    root:x:0:0:root:/root:/bin/bash
    bin:x:1:1:bin:/bin:/bin/false
    daemon:x:2:2:daemon:/sbin:/bin/false
    mail:x:8:12:mail:/var/spool/mail:/bin/false
    (...remaining data omitted...)

--- dumping headers of the passwd.o file ---

    chris@raspberrypi ~/tmp/objcopy_to_carray $ objdump -x passwd.o
 
    passwd.o:     file format elf32-littlearm
    passwd.o
    architecture: arm, flags 0x00000010:
    HAS_SYMS
    start address 0x00000000
    private flags = 0: [APCS-32] [FPA float format]
    
    Sections:
    Idx Name          Size      VMA       LMA       File off  Algn
      0 .data         0000025f  00000000  00000000  00000034  2**0
                      CONTENTS, ALLOC, LOAD, DATA
    SYMBOL TABLE:
    00000000 l    d  .data	00000000 .data
    00000000 g       .data	00000000 _binary__etc_passwd_start
    0000025f g       .data	00000000 _binary__etc_passwd_end
    0000025f g       *ABS*	00000000 _binary__etc_passwd_size