solaris binary stuff on gentoo ..? ..

GenTimJS · Guru Joined: 03 May 2003 Posts: 406 Location: NH, USA

I've seen in the sparc kernel options that there are options for running misc a.out (solaris) executables ....

anyone know if this actually works?

If so, anyone know if it might be possible (hardcore dev question) to jiffyrig the SunPCI card drivers/application to run under linux?

I ask because my work is going to put a Sunblade 150 on my desk (650mhz, 1gig ram) with a SunPCI IIIpro card in it ... I can do what I want with it, but the idea is that I can run *nix and *doze on the same box (im the network admin) and I'd honestly prefer gentoo to solaris on a box that "slow" ..

thoughts?
advice?
slaps?
_________________
-Tim Smith

nephros · Posted: Tue Nov 22, 2005 7:16 pm Post subject:

AFAIK you can not run Solaris binaries on a Linux box, even a Sparc-based one.

Much more than simply support for binaries is needed -- a kernel emulation layer mimicking and translating the Solaris syscalls to Linux syscalls. Linux doesn't have that.
Maybe you will be able to do this using qemu though.

The a.out support in the kernel means that the kernel will be able to run Linux binaries compiled to the old a.out format.

As for running Linux on the SunPCI according to the (dated) HOWTO it should be possible with a little tinkering. The Gento-on-SPARC FAQ sais the contrary however.
I'm interested in the results, let us know if you succeed with Gentoo on this!

HTH
_________________
Please put [SOLVED] in your topic if you are a moron.

Weeve · Retired Dev Joined: 30 Oct 2002 Posts: 641

As for the SunPCI card, there is no support planned for accessing the card from linux at the current time. The HOWTO posted in the previous post appears to be for using Linux as the OS the card runs when you are running Solaris as the OS on the SPARC.

As for Solaris binary emulation, I seem to recall that the kernel documentation talks a little bit about how to set this up (basically you need to setup enough Solaris built libs in a given location so that your Solaris binary application's library dependencies can be resolved). I do know it did work at one point, but the last thing I recall hearing was that it was currently broken. However I have not heard anything one way or the other about it in some time. With regards to the previous post, the kernel option for Solaris binary support (when working) provides all that you supposedly need from a kernel perspective. Also currently qemu only supports a sparc v8 environment, which may not work with modern Solaris applications (particularly anything specifically built for Solaris 9 or above).

nephros · Posted: Tue Nov 22, 2005 9:59 pm Post subject:

Alright, sorry about the misinformation of the kernel-runs-Solaris.binaries part.
This option seems to be hidden in x86 kernel configs and I've only ever compiled a sun/Sparc kernel twice or so. Must have missed that there.
_________________
Please put [SOLVED] in your topic if you are a moron.

Weeve · Retired Dev Joined: 30 Oct 2002 Posts: 641

Yeah the Solaris binary compatibility only works on SPARC at the moment. I believe at the time it was originally introduced, Solaris on x86 hw wasn't really around (or in a state that people cared to use it). Best bet for folks who'd want to run Solaris on x86 would be a virtual machine like the aforementioned qemu or VMWare.

On a side note, it is supposedly possible to run Linux inside of a Solaris 10 container/zone on x86 as well.