On 20 Dec 2000, Mirian Crzig Lennox wrote:

> Well, it seems like NetBSD is the place to start.  That brings me to my
> other question, which is "can NetBSD/vax run 4.3 user-mode binaries?"
> I've seen evidence in the kernel source that NetBSD is supposed to have
> support for 4.3 syscalls.  But I haven't had any success at all with
> running 4.3 binaries from the CSRG CD-ROM.

It's supposed to work :-)

Looking at the GENERIC kernel config file at:
ftp://ftp.netbsd.org/pub/NetBSD/NetBSD-release/src/sys/arch/vax/conf/GENERIC
The 4.3BSD support should be compiled into the generic kernel.  It should
work.  I'm not sure how often this gets tested though.

  # Old compat stuff; needed to run 4.3BSD Reno programs.
  # Note that if COMPAT_ULTRIX is set, you lose compatibility with
  # 4.3BSD Reno programs and get Ultrix compatibility instead.
  # (They cannot coexist).
  options         COMPAT_VAX1K    # Must be present to run pre-1.4 binaries.
  options         COMPAT_43
  options         COMPAT_09
  options         COMPAT_10
  options         COMPAT_11
  options         COMPAT_12
  options         COMPAT_13
  #options        COMPAT_ULTRIX
  options         TCP_COMPAT_42

On a related note.  Someone recently did work (Matt Thomas?) on adding
NetBSD/vax support for running binaries from VAX based AT&T System V
R<something> Unixes, right? Is there an option in the kernel config file
which needs to be set to turn on that support?

-brian.
--- Brian Chase | bdc@world.std.com | http://world.std.com/~bdc/ -----
              I am trying to decode this, but I think your
                 ROT13 encoder is malfunctioning.  -- K.