| DBSYM(8) | System Manager's Manual | DBSYM(8) | 
dbsym —
| dbsym | [ -Ppv] [-bbfdname] kernel | 
dbsym is used to copy the symbol table in a newly linked
  kernel into the db_symtab array (in the data section) so
  that the ddb(4) kernel debugger can
  find the symbols. This program is only used on systems for which the boot
  program does not load the symbol table into memory with the kernel. The space
  for these symbols is reserved in the data segment using a config option like:
options		SYMTAB_SPACE=72000To recognize kernel executable format, the
    -b flag specifies BFD name of kernel.
If the -P flag is given,
    dbsym will report the size of the kernel symbol
    table.
If the -p flag is given,
    dbsym will report the size of the kernel symbol
    table and the size of the db_symtab space. Two values are printed out in a
    line separated by a space.
If the -v flag is given,
    dbsym will print out status information as it is
    copying the symbol table.
Note that debugging symbols are not useful to the
    ddb(4) kernel debugger, so to
    minimize the size of the kernel, one should either compile the kernel
    without debugging symbols (no -g flag) or use the
    strip(1) command to strip
    debugging symbols from the kernel before dbsym is
    used to copy the symbol table. The command
strip -d netbsd| August 14, 2014 | NetBSD 9.4 |