Hi, I want to know why the sysnames for Linux platform are named diffrently than it is done for other platforms. On Linux we have sysnames, i386_linux24, i386_linux26 etc which is named after kernel version whereas the same is done after OS version like rs_aix52, rs_aix53, sun4x_59, sun4x_510 etc for other platforms.
According to the AFS semantics, the binaries under a sysname should be able to run on all systems with the same sysname, if I am right. However, considering Linux here, OS versions can get significant changes over time and we may not be advanced to 2.8.x kernel. So in this case, sysname would still be same 'i386_linux26' but the binaries may not run across. Considering the changes done in ELF format replacing SHT_HASH section by SHT_GNU_HASH, the binaries built (with default options) on RHEL-5 would not work on RHEL-4, both happen to have 2.6.x kernel. So If a user builds his program "bigtest" on RHEL5 and puts it under @sys area and tries to run the same from RHEL4, which would point to the same binary, and this would not work. As of now, the RHEL-5 user should make use of linker option "-Wl,--hash-style=sysv" if he plans to put under @sys directory. Please correct me if I am wrong. Thanks. ~avinesh
