ESP8266 Community Forum

That is why I am here asking. I have already tried to convert to ELF using objcopy, but this fails (as you point out) to recover the symbols. So what I am really asking is: Does anyone know a way to decompile/disassemble an ESP8266 firmware?

You can create a backup of the flash (and optionally restore it into another ESP) with the esptool if that's what you mean.

Scratchabit is an interactive disassembler which can be used with raw binary files.

See viewtopic.php?f=13&t=3756&start=5