This article at OnLamp details the IRIX binary compatibility implementation for the NetBSD operating system. This includes the creation of a new emulation subsystem inside the NetBSD kernel and a lot of reverse engineering to understand and reproduce how IRIX internals work.
IRIX Binary Compatibility for NetBSD, Part 1
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Does this seem like a useful feature? With Linux emulation, you basically have to install a bunch of base libraries in order to run any useful applications. Where would one find the equivalent for an IRIX system? It seems you’d already have to have an IRIX system that you could copy libraries over from. Sounds like a lot of work, and if you already have an IRIX system, why would you want to run your programs on NetBSD? It’s fascinating that they can make this work, but it doesn’t really seem that useful.
actual…i can see a purpose to this…let’s say you’ve got a bunch of disparate machines…vaxen, i386, macs, SGI workstations…and you’re sick of makin’ em all work…so you wanna switch to using just one OS…well you’ve got two options…Linux (no emulation for your old OS) or NetBSD…
this is where NetBSDs emulation is very nice…you can use the old libs and apps from your old installation so that you won’t need to recompile and you won’t lose your commercial binary-only apps
besides that, this is just plain cool! what’s the point of having amateur radio support in the Linux kernel? exactly…
-bytes256
Well… you would still need a mips machine to execute most of the code, afaik there aren`t many mips platforms out where running IRIX binaries would be any usefull.
Or is it intend to run those on a sgi system with netbsd installed, lol?
>Or is it intend to run those on a sgi system with netbsd installed, lol?
Well, duh. Yes.
its actually quite useful: at work we run a number of old IRIX machines for compatibility reasons (old apps, etc) but the security and maintainability of IRIX leaves a lot to be desired.
i’d seriously consider moving to netbsd, even if it means copying over a load of libs. but only if it ran the heavy software we use.
>Well, duh. Yes.
Actually that last question was intend to be a joke, it is obvious that this binary compatibility is designed for a netbsd install on a sgi system.
But, but besides the argument that matt brought up it doesnt sound very logical to install netbsd on a sgi machine if you are not a hobbyist/developer playing with the architecture.
the whole netbsd/sgimips port isnt very mature/stable and it is lacking support for various sgi hardware.
was that the point of it wasnt ~just~ the IRIX compatibility itself… which may or may not be useful… but also to explain ~how~ they implemented it… give a roadmap to anyone who may want to write API compatibility for other systems
Well, it’s nice to see how well they documented the process for implementing binary compatibility. The problem is… who would ever run NetBSD over Irix? Moronic admins who know how to patch NetBSD but not Irix? That’s their key demographic. Personally this seems incredibly useless to me.
Well, it’s nice to see how well they documented the process for implementing binary compatibility. The problem is… who would ever run NetBSD over Irix? Moronic admins who know how to patch NetBSD but not Irix? That’s their key demographic. Personally this seems incredibly useless to me.
its caled compatability (ie: why my netbsd sparcstaion can run sunos 4 binaries). you may have old software that works 100% fine,and if it aint broke dont fix it
While you can’t see any reason for running NetBSD over IRIX, some people might want to do that, and they might have good reasons. For example, someone might not be a hardcore IRIX user, who doesn’t need all the wondrous graphics or what-have-yous IRIX offers. For such people, NetBSD may offer something IRIX doesn’t. In such situation, they might install NetBSD, and then using IRIX compat to run their old binaries they have.
Also, as far as I understand, IRIX compat works on any NetBSD/mips platform. So, you could run IRIX binaries on your MIPS evaluation boards or even the handheld MIPS computers.
You could just as well question Linux and FreeBSD emulations NetBSD offers. “Who whould ever run NetBSD over Linux on modern Intels?” Answer: several people. Why wouldn’t this apply for any other platform/OS?