diff --git a/bfd/ChangeLog b/bfd/ChangeLog
index c97976dd8b..f546328ac6 100644
--- a/bfd/ChangeLog
+++ b/bfd/ChangeLog
@@ -1,3 +1,8 @@
+2021-01-20  Alan Modra  <amodra@gmail.com>
+
+	* elf64-ppc.c (ppc64_elf_get_synthetic_symtab): Don't assume
+	section symbols are present.
+
 2021-01-19  Alan Modra  <amodra@gmail.com>
 
 	* elf64-ppc.c (elf_hash_entry): New inline function.  Use
diff --git a/bfd/elf64-ppc.c b/bfd/elf64-ppc.c
index ed595074b9..f76830b6c4 100644
--- a/bfd/elf64-ppc.c
+++ b/bfd/elf64-ppc.c
@@ -2299,7 +2299,8 @@ ppc64_elf_get_synthetic_symtab (bfd *abfd,
 	 sym->section directly.  With separate debug info files, the
 	 symbols will be extracted from the debug file while abfd passed
 	 to this function is the real binary.  */
-      if (strcmp (syms[i]->section->name, ".opd") == 0)
+      if ((syms[i]->flags & BSF_SECTION_SYM) != 0
+	  && strcmp (syms[i]->section->name, ".opd") == 0)
 	++i;
       codesecsym = i;