Re: Solaris source

Mike Jagdis (mike@roan.co.uk)
Wed, 30 Apr 1997 09:44:01 +0100 (GMT/BST)


On Wed, 30 Apr 1997, Juhani Rautiainen wrote:

> so far I haven't been able to run even solaris/x86 gzip (it crashes
> after it finds shared SysV libraries).

It would. Libraries are only required to present a standard *source*
level api. Often there are all kinds of nasties hidden in defines
along with "interesting" internal differences. There is some work
here for someone :-). (Undergrad project, maybe?)

Once you have a suitable library you probably need to do some
work on the iBCS module itself. Solaris is a recent derivative
of SVR4 but almost certainly has one or two critical differences
in the kernel interfaces. If you are unlucky you will have to add
a whole new personality to the mapping tables and figure out
someway to recognise when you are dealing with a Solaris-compiled
ELF binary. The work needed often turns out to be surprisingly
easy but *understanding* what needs to happen is 110% of the
work - and is practically impossible without a machine running
the target OS to hand.

Incidentally there *is* a linux-ibcs mailing list. The official
home of iBCS is tsx-11.mit.edu:/pub/linux/BETA/ibcs2/.

Mike

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