John Summerfield wrote:

>> There was a significant change to a value in the ELF header that makes "new"
>> programs unable to run on "old" kernels (the opposite is possible though).
>
>I thought about that, but a dot-o file?

These are also in ELF format, and contain the ELF
architecture flag.  A new kernel won't help here though,
you'll need a new linker (binutils).

The ELF architecture flag is generated by:
 - the assembler (for object files)
 - the linker (for object files, shared object, and executables)

It is read / verified by:
 - the linker (for object files)
 - the dynamic loader (for shared libraries)
 - the kernel (for executables)
 - the insmod and modprobe tools (for kernel modules)

So, if you want to upgrade your system so that it can cope
with the new ELF architecture flag for S/390, you'll need
 - binutils (assembler, linker)
 - glibc (dynamic loader)
 - modutils (insmod, modprobe)
 - kernel

However, even this might not be enough to use binary
applications built on SLES 7 (or similar) with SuSE 7.0
(or similar):  the compiler has changed from gcc 2.95.2
to 2.95.3, which means the C++ ABI and C++ standard
libraries have changed in an incompatible way.  So if
the app in question uses C++, you'll also need the
new compiler and its libraries.

As this means to replace basically *all* of the core
components of the distribution, I'd say it would probably
be simpler to just upgrade to the new distribution ...

Bye,
Ulrich

--
  Dr. Ulrich Weigand
  [EMAIL PROTECTED]

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