From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Received: from mailserv2.iuinc.com (qmailr@mailserv2.iuinc.com [206.245.164.55]) by puffin.external.hp.com (8.8.7/8.8.7) with SMTP id OAA07628 for ; Mon, 21 Jun 1999 14:49:52 -0600 From: Stan Sieler Message-Id: <199906212049.NAA32096@bart.allegro.com> Subject: Re: [parisc-linux] HPUX binary compatibility To: mike@fast.cs.utah.edu (Mike Hibler) Date: Mon, 21 Jun 1999 13:49:43 -0700 (PDT) Cc: parisc-linux@thepuffingroup.com In-Reply-To: <199906211820.MAA06267@fast.cs.utah.edu> from "Mike Hibler" at Jun 21, 99 12:20:14 pm MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII List-ID: Re: > Yow, that is an ambitious goal! I can see the desirability of doing it Yes...I've been trying to get MPE/iX to support HP-UX binaries via this method for a number of years, but HP hasn't shown much interest. The reason I like it is that it removes the slightly obscene distinction of a "linux process" vs. "HP-UX process". (MPE/iX, which also runs on PA-RISC, and which has an internal emulator for the Classic (CISC) HP 3000 instruction set, was originally going to have a similar distinction: Native Mode process vs. Compatibility Mode process ... but people pointed out, quite correctly, that a process might want to switch from NM to CM to NM ... so a process is just a process ... the NM/CM mode is no longer a type of process.) What does the MPE example have to do with Linux? Everything...what happens when your "linux process" wants to dynamically load code from an HP-UX library? Or vice versa? What about shared libraries? Take it from someone who's been there: having a "process type" isn't a 100% solution. Having non-overlapping system call mechanism (either different numbers or a different address) provides a much closer to 100% solution. You may still need to translate things to provide data back to an HP-UX system call (e.g., process structure for pstat?), but that's *doable* ... and the translator method won't get that far! -- Stan Sieler sieler@allegro.com http://www.allegro.com/sieler/