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ibcs and Linux 64 bit kernel

2009-06-11
2013-06-06
  • Joe Robbins

    Joe Robbins - 2009-06-11

    In January 2007, Ed Reed wrote (in this forum):
    "64-bit support - not for the ABI, of course, but so that users on a 64-bit machine can use their 64-bit OS to run 32-bit ABI applications
    and have the ABI interface keep up."

    Has ibcs/abi kept up?

    Does anyone successfully run these emulator modules in a 64 bit kernel?

    I am attempting to run ibcs_3.8 with Redhat Linux 5 (2.6.18) X86-64. The COFF module seems OK. But when module svr4/misc.c is called to emulate execv(), things go wrong (segment fault). I am guessing that the arg list and environment list, passed by the COFF executable, contain 32 bit pointers and will fail if passed to kernel execv() in their raw form.

    My understanding is that I cannot compile the ibcs modules in 32 bit mode (i.e. using the gcc compiler -m32 arg) and then install them with a 64 bit kernel because all code within a single "process space" - in this case the kernel - must be EITHER 32 bit OR 64 bit.

    I would be really interested to know what the state-of-play is on ibcs. Please can anyone help.

    Joe.
     

     
    • Joe Robbins

      Joe Robbins - 2009-06-11

      For those in the Linux world that don't "get" iBcs, I would like to explain why it's been so useful to us ...
      I have for 10 years used ibcs to  host our Cobol interpreter. The interpreter was released on SCO OS5. We have no access to compiler sources. A good Cobol compiler is hard to find for Linux unless you are a big user willing to pay "enterprise licence fees". The open source cobol projects seem "stuck". So ibcs has been a great solutioni for us.
      We program in C and Java and use J2EE and Netbeans BUT those old Cobol programs just keep rolling along!

      Thanks to all the folk who have given time to the iBcs Project over the years.

      Joe  

       

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