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IRIX Multithreading Emulation on NetBSD

GrosBill writes "Onlamp publishes one more paper about IRIX binary compatibility implementation on NetBSD. This time, this is about emulating IRIX native multithreading capabilities on NetBSD, which is quite interesting since NetBSD does not support native multithreading for its native binaries yet. The paper also covers some reverse engineering tricks: how to use a debugger to discover everything about IRIX multithreading."

18 comments

  1. Multithreaded First Post by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1, Offtopic

    First POST!

    1. Re:Multithreaded First Post by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1, Offtopic

      fork()! bomb!

    2. Re:Multithreaded First Post by LordHunter317 · · Score: -1, Offtopic

      MAD FORK BOMB!

    3. Re:Multithreaded First Post by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1, Offtopic

      IRIX forK()!

  2. REAL multithreaded first post. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1, Offtopic

    the one above isn't multithreaded.

    1. Re:REAL multithreaded first post. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1, Offtopic

      ...but this one is

  3. This is vary useful by TRoLLaXoR · · Score: -1

    for all two people who need IRIX threads on NetBSD.

    1. Re:This is vary useful by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1, Offtopic

      Welcome back!! How was jail? And will we be seeing the return of trollaxor.com??

    2. Re:This is vary useful by TRoLLaXoR · · Score: -1

      > How was jail

      Great. Free room and board.

      > And will we be seeing the return of trollaxor.com

      It's up now. Keep watching my page for news.

  4. Give them some credit by mhesseltine · · Score: 4, Insightful

    They figured out a way to make a feature work on a platform that doesn't support that feature. That's called innovation, and not in the terms that Microsoft would use it.

    Furthermore, since this has been reverse engineered, they might be able to work this into NetBSD, thus fixing the problem of NetBSD not supporting multi-threading. I say, "congratulations."

    --
    Overrated / Underrated : Moderation :: Anonymous Coward : Posting
  5. Hack. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    A better way to implement this would be adding proper threading support in the first place...

    1. Re:Hack. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Real multi-threading (Scheduler Activations) is currently in progress... in fact I think the first round of code is already in the -current code. As is SMP.

    2. Re:Hack. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0
      I don't think that you actually understand the problem. This announcement is that NetBSD's IRIX emulation layer supports multi-threaded binaries. So, how exactly is it a hack?
      A better way to implement this would be adding proper threading support in the first place...
      Adding proper threading support would not affect the IRIX emulation layer at all. You see, thread support involves both kernel and userland code. Now, if NetBSD is running a native IRIX binary then the userland code is fixed and written by SGI. So, the NetBSD kernel has to provide the syscalls and behaviours that the IRIX userland code expects which is likely to not be exactly what native threads would expect.

      So, emulated threads and native threads are actually two disjoint projects which have different implementation strategies and different goals. They just share a small amount of code in the kernel.

    3. Re:Hack. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      A better way to implement this would be adding proper threading support in the first place...
      What the hell kind of logic is that?? If we designed everything for problems that hadn't even arisen yet we'd never get anything out into actual production. Right when we'd get close they'd just throw another "problem" that we could "easily" solve before rolling out.

  6. Cool.. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1, Troll

    What a great idea! One dead operating system can emulate another! Wooptie fucking doo!

    1. Re:Cool.. by axehat · · Score: -1, Troll

      Look out kids, attack of the trolls!

  7. *BSD is dying by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1, Troll
    It is official; Netcraft now confirms: *BSD is dying

    One more crippling bombshell hit the already beleaguered *BSD community when IDC confirmed that *BSD market share has dropped yet again, now down to less than a fraction of 1 percent of all servers. Coming on the heels of a recent Netcraft survey which plainly states that *BSD has lost more market share, this news serves to reinforce what we've known all along. *BSD is collapsing in complete disarray, as fittingly exemplified by failing dead last in the recent Sys Admin comprehensive networking test.

    You don't need to be a Kreskin to predict *BSD's future. The hand writing is on the wall: *BSD faces a bleak future. In fact there won't be any future at all for *BSD because *BSD is dying. Things are looking very bad for *BSD. As many of us are already aware, *BSD continues to lose market share. Red ink flows like a river of blood.

    FreeBSD is the most endangered of them all, having lost 93% of its core developers. The sudden and unpleasant departures of long time FreeBSD developers Jordan Hubbard and Mike Smith only serve to underscore the point more clearly. There can no longer be any doubt: FreeBSD is dying.

    Let's keep to the facts and look at the numbers.

    OpenBSD leader Theo states that there are 7000 users of OpenBSD. How many users of NetBSD are there? Let's see. The number of OpenBSD versus NetBSD posts on Usenet is roughly in ratio of 5 to 1. Therefore there are about 7000/5 = 1400 NetBSD users. BSD/OS posts on Usenet are about half of the volume of NetBSD posts. Therefore there are about 700 users of BSD/OS. A recent article put FreeBSD at about 80 percent of the *BSD market. Therefore there are (7000+1400+700)*4 = 36400 FreeBSD users. This is consistent with the number of FreeBSD Usenet posts.

    Due to the troubles of Walnut Creek, abysmal sales and so on, FreeBSD went out of business and was taken over by BSDI who sell another troubled OS. Now BSDI is also dead, its corpse turned over to yet another charnel house.

    All major surveys show that *BSD has steadily declined in market share. *BSD is very sick and its long term survival prospects are very dim. If *BSD is to survive at all it will be among OS dilettante dabblers. *BSD continues to decay. Nothing short of a miracle could save it at this point in time. For all practical purposes, *BSD is dead.

    Fact: *BSD is dying

  8. Last post, bitches by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1, Redundant

    eat me.