Re: compat_bsdos

>> On Wed, 22 Jul 2020 at 18:44, Steve Blinkhorn <[email protected]> wrote:
>>
>> Does anyone know when compat_bsdos was abandoned?  It seems to me that
>> it would make more sense, if I have to run an emulator, to run the
>> lates version of NetBSD that had compat_bsdos.  It only ever supported
>> statically-linked software anyway, but I have one major system that
>> used to run perfectly with the compatibility layer, but throws up error
>> after error relating to include files and ioctl calls when I try to
>> run the compilation script on NetBSD.  It had compiled out of the box
>> on BSD/OS.

 > On 2020-07-26 17:00, David Brownlee wrote:
 >
 > It may be made harder because I don't think NetBSD ever had an
 > explicit COMPAT_BSDOS, it was just inferred by various other compat
 > options.
 >
 > A bunch of the compat layers were retired to the Attic a little while
 > ago - pretty much because they had no one willing to step up and make
 > sure they still worked on an ongoing basis after other areas in the
 > system were refactored. If you might be interested in this, then I'm
 > sure there would be others willing to help with any questions :-p

I would not say that any BSD compat code is abandoned.  As David 
mentioned, there was no special BSDi compat layer.  Binaries from 
BSD/386 1.0 and BSD/OS 2.0 worked on NetBSD because the executables used 
the same system calls as 4.3 and 4.4 BSD as covered in COMPAT_43, 
COMPAT_NOMID, COMPAT_09, and EXEC_AOUT.


 > Regarding older versions of NetBSD - I would probably start by trying
 > NetBSD-7 i386 to see if your BSD/OS binaries worked, and then going
 > backwards or forwards from there :)

Version 7 on i386 is a good starting point.

I found that BSD/OS 2.0 binaries stopped running starting from NetBSD 
8.0 onwards the last time I tested earlier this year.  Before that 
running the 2.0 userland in a chroot generally worked and was able to 
load the shared libraries that were introduced with 2.0.  I have not 
tested later versions of BSD/OS.

What BSDi release were the binaries targeting Steven?

If the binaries worked with BSD/386 1.0, you could try upgrading to 
current on amd64.  There was a fix in March as part of PR/55025 and 
PR/55047 that I submitted, so BSD compat in general is still supported.

If you try to test further you will want to be sure that your amd64 
kernel config includes "conf/compat_netbsd09.config" and COMPAT_NOMID 
while null memory protection is disabled with sysctl -w 
"vm.user_va0_disable=0".


Best,

Dan Plassche