FreeBSD SysVR4 Emulation Mark Newton, newton@atdot.dotat.org

More info on Solaris 2.6 and Solaris 7 emulation

Some email on the subject is reproduced below.

Unfortunately, FreeBSD uses the corresponding LDT entry for something else, so it'll take a bit of work to hack around it. I have some vacation time coming up, so I'll be working on it...

STOP PRESS

This patch, or something like it, will be committed to FreeBSD at the appropriate time (whenever that is). In the meantime, download it and apply it with patch -p < segpatch in /usr/src.

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From newton Mon Dec 21 21:23:46 1998
Subject: Re: What's an lcall? :-)
To: mike@smith.net.au (Mike Smith)
Date: Mon, 21 Dec 1998 21:23:46 +1030 (CST)
Cc: peter@freebsd.org, sef@freebsd.org, jlemon@freebsd.org
In-Reply-To: <199812210958.BAA01247@dingo.cdrom.com> from "Mike Smith" at Dec 21, 98 01:58:24 am
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Mike Smith wrote:

 > Mark Newton wrote:
 > > 0x4000dfba <_end+939271110>:    movl   $0x18,%eax
 > > 0x4000dfbf <_end+939271115>:    lcall  0x27,0x0
 > > 0x4000dfc6 <_end+939271122>:    ret    
 > > The lcall instruction is at the program counter indicated by gdb
 > > when the program gets SIGBUS.
 > 
 > lcall is an intersegment jump; in this case it's almost certainly a
 > change in the system call interface.  As I undertand it, it's trying to
 > use the 27th segment descriptor as a call gate to get into the kernel;
 > we use either the 7th or (faster) int 0x80.

Right -- From /usr/include/sys/segment.h on a Solaris/x86 2.6
system I can telnet to:

/* user selectors */
#define	USER_CS		0x17	/* user's code segment */
#define	USER_DS		0x1F	/* user's data segment */
#define	USER_SCALL	0x07	/* call gate for system calls */
#define	USER_SIGCALL	0x0F	/* call gate for sigreturn */
#define	USER_ALTSCALL	0x27	/* alternate call gate for system calls */
#define	USER_ALTSIGCLEAN 0x2F	/* alternate call gate for sigreturn */

So it looks like Mike was right when he said it was a change to
the system call interface.

Any ideas on why they would use 0x27?  Assuming the value they're loading
into %eax is a system call number, it looks like they might be calling
getuid() here, anyway. I wonder if the semantics for making system calls
through segment 0x27 are the same as for 0x07?  If so, (a) Sun's change
seems even more stupid, and (b) it might be fairly simple to MakeItWork
by handing 0x27 in the same way as 0x07 in our kernel.

The down side is that this'll have to be a kernel option, which casts
doubt on the usefulness of implementing the emulator as an LKM/KLD.
If you need to build a custom kernel anyway then why bother modloading
something else? :-/  Unless we handle 0x07 and 0x27 equivalently
by default, but I doubt I'll ever get that past anyone on -hackers
because...

 > This is a bit icky; normally we don't fill in any descriptors that high
 > up because application programs like to use them.

Yer, because of that.

 > I'm not familiar 
 > enough with the way that the GDT/LDT fit together, but I *think* that 
 > you'll have to construct an LDT for the process that catches the new 
 > syscall and arrange to have it inserted when appropriate.

Thanks for the pointer;  I'll start having a look at it as soon as
South Park finishes 

More later.

Cheers,

    - mark

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I tried an internal modem,                    newton@atdot.dotat.org
     but it hurt when I walked.                          Mark Newton
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