December 1., I started in a new job as a system developer. The project I
will be working on uses AIX, WebSphere and DB2 from IBM. Now, here at home,
I'd like to play a little with DB2, as it looks to be a nice database
system, which even can be used as a backend to IBM's SecureWay LDAP server,
which I'd very much like to experiment with.

IBM being what it is, DB2 is offered for a limited set of platforms, which
does not include NetBSD. However, the Personal Developer's Edition is
available for Linux; and the SecureWay LDAP server, including DB2 for the
backend, is available for Solaris.

It would seem to me that the Linux version should be capable of being made
to run on NetBSD using Linux emulation. However, I'd rather use the Solaris
stuff with the Solaris emulation, as it matches my work environment better.
(I presume the Solaris version _will_ run on x86, but I'm not sure.)

In either case, I have no experience using foreign OS emulation on NetBSD,
except for packages installed from pkgsrc, and I can't seem to find any
documentation on how to do installs myself, using rpm and whatever it is
they use on Linux and Solaris.

So if somebody could provide pointers to how-to's or general guidance on
installing software to run with emulation, or even better: if someone has
tried installing DB2 on NetBSD already, I'd be very grateful. Of course, if
this is a futile quest that can only go wrong, I'd also appreciate being
told.

(If I had a machine to spare, I could install Solaris and get done with it,
unfortunately that's not an option.)


-Lasse