Local variable address in memory

For a homework assignment I have been given some c files, and compiled them using arm-linux-gcc (we will eventually be targeting gumstix boards, but for these exercises we have been working with qemu and ema). One of the questions confuses me a bit-- we are told to "..use arm-linux-objdump to find the location of variables declared in main() in the executable binary." However, these variables are local and thus shouldn't have addresses until runtime, correct? I'm thinking that maybe what I need to find is the offset in the stack frame, which can in fact be found using objdump (not that I know how). Anyways, any insight into the matter would be greatly appreciated, and I would be happy to post the source code if necessary.

Unless the local variables are declared "static," they will not have symbols in the object file. You are correct in thinking that they do not get addresses until runtime, and then it depends on where the stack is located. Even if the location of the stack is fixed, there is no guarantee that the variables will be in any specific location -- if there is a recursive function, there may even be multiple copies of these variables on the stack. So the address of a local variable, unless it is static, cannot be determined until runtime.

Thank you brewbuck, this is indeed what I suspected. The function doesn't utilize any recursion, and for the purposes of the assignment I think it is safe to assume the program will only be run once (I imagine multiple instances might lead to further confusion). This being the case, would you be able to provide insight into where in the code these variables are actually getting there memory? The question asks for there location (in hex), but I'm fairly certain my response should be the offset from the stack pointer. This stuff is somewhat over my head in terms of understanding, and I've currently been digging around rather blindly through the output from arm-linux-objdump -D a.out. I've also been hunting around with objdump -S to get a better idea of what the source code is actually doing, but I can't seem to find the information I need. I would equally appreciate any good links; a lot of my searching for objdump has yielded really high-level stuff...well, high-level relative to my expertise :)

What exactly is the wording of the assignment?

Perhaps you're meant to look at the generated assembler (using objdump) to work out the call stack frames.
Stack Frame

We are given source code and the makefile (which we must modify to compile for arm-linux- ). The exact wording of the problem is "Use arm-linux-objdump to find the addresses of the variables MAXSIZE and RealIn (declared in main()) in the binary code."

Perhaps the answer is "local variables don't have addresses"