Re: OpenBSD - Linux compatibility
* Mihai Popescu mih...@gmail.com [2014-04-21 17:21]: Is there a paper explaining the purpose of Linux compatibility in OpenBSD? I'm not from UNIX time and I'm curious when and why this feature was added. it's the only binay compat left, we deleted all the others. it is useful to some to run closed-source software. at least one of our developers cares enough to update it every once in a while so that newer stuff works. i personally haven't used it in ages, probably more than a decade - but pplz requirements vary. to understand the purpose of the binary compats, you really have to go way back in history. there was a time when the only way to run a grapical browser on openbsd was to use the netscape binary under BSDi emulation (I think it was BSDi, not 100% certain) on i386 or the solaris binary under emulation on a sparc. there was no open source graphical browser back then. -- Henning Brauer, h...@bsws.de, henn...@openbsd.org BS Web Services GmbH, http://bsws.de, Full-Service ISP Secure Hosting, Mail and DNS Services. Dedicated Servers, Root to Fully Managed Henning Brauer Consulting, http://henningbrauer.com/
Re: OpenBSD - Linux compatibility
to understand the purpose of the binary compats, you really have to go way back in history. there was a time when the only way to run a grapical browser on openbsd was to use the netscape binary under BSDi emulation (I think it was BSDi, not 100% certain) on i386 or the solaris binary under emulation on a sparc. there was no open source graphical browser back then. Actually it was the SunOS 4.x binary which would be used on sparc; fgsch@ and me tried independently to run the Solaris (SunOS 5.x) binary, but it was heavily relying upon Solaris threads, and our kernel was in no way ready for that. It could probably be done nowadays, as an exercize in futility. Miod
OpenBSD - Linux compatibility
Is there a paper explaining the purpose of Linux compatibility in OpenBSD? I'm not from UNIX time and I'm curious when and why this feature was added. Thanks.
Re: OpenBSD - Linux compatibility
On Mon, Apr 21, 2014 at 8:20 AM, Mihai Popescu mih...@gmail.com wrote: Is there a paper explaining the purpose of Linux compatibility in OpenBSD? I'm not from UNIX time and I'm curious when and why this feature was added. It actually predates OpenBSD, being part of the original import when OpenBSD split from NetBSD. Ergo, if you want to understand its original purpose, you'll need to look there. If you're wondering why it's still around, well, it's still useful to at least one developer who does maintenance and some improvements to it. However, it's not audited as closely and shouldn't be enabled on systems with untrusted users (and is thus off until enabled by root). Philip Guenther
Re: OpenBSD - Linux compatibility
On Mon, Apr 21, 2014 at 8:20 AM, Mihai Popescu mih...@gmail.com wrote: Is there a paper explaining the purpose of Linux compatibility in OpenBSD? I'm not from UNIX time and I'm curious when and why this feature was added. It actually predates OpenBSD, being part of the original import when OpenBSD split from NetBSD. Ergo, if you want to understand its original purpose, you'll need to look there. Chris Torek wrote the original fragments in his 4.4BSD port for sparc. He used this to operte in the SunOS 4.x ABI. When I merged the sparc codebase into NetBSD, I switched to the NetBSD ABI cleanly. I grabbed the opportunity to bring his compat code into the base, and at the same time others used it for other compat purposes, simple ones, quite BSD-like. The argument transform stackgap was invented by me then, but the portable abstractions for it were done by others. Then Linux compat showed up. If you're wondering why it's still around, well, it's still useful to at least one developer who does maintenance and some improvements to it. However, it's not audited as closely and shouldn't be enabled on systems with untrusted users (and is thus off until enabled by root). To regain trust, someone has to man up and show it love.
Re: OpenBSD - Linux compatibility
previously on this list Mihai Popescu contributed: Is there a paper explaining the purpose of Linux compatibility in OpenBSD? I'm not from UNIX time and I'm curious when and why this feature was added. If you want to run say Opera that cannot be recompiled then you need it. Unfortunately the one or two apps I may wish to use it for such as segger Jlink require drivers/udev that I suspect could not be made to work, but hey you can't have everything. -- ___ 'Write programs that do one thing and do it well. Write programs to work together. Write programs to handle text streams, because that is a universal interface' (Doug McIlroy) In Other Words - Don't design like polkit or systemd ___ I have no idea why RTFM is used so aggressively on LINUX mailing lists because whilst 'apropos' is traditionally the most powerful command on Unix-like systems it's 'modern' replacement 'apropos' on Linux is a tool to help psychopaths learn to control their anger. (Kevin Chadwick) ___
Re: OpenBSD - Linux compatibility
It exists on freebsd, but I never used it. I remove every bit of not necessary code from the kernel to prove manhood, or whatever you call it. Compability should enable you to run linux binaries. At the mo- ment almost every known app works on openbsd or free bsd. Personally, I do not care having linux on bsd. For linux experience small node is enough and cheap enough. Best regards Zoran
