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Linux ports

Currently, this port only runs on Linux/i386. There are Linux/ppc and Linux/ia64 ports underway, but not completed. The other architectures should also be supported. Ports pose no major problems since Linux hides most of the hardware from its processes. The main things that show through are register names. The system call dispatcher needs to extract the system call number and arguments from specific registers, and put the return value in a specific register afterwards. This is obviously machine-dependent. This is handled by using symbolic register names in the generic code and using a architecture-dependent header file to map those names to real machine registers.

The other major portability problem is the system call vector. Most system calls are common to all architectures, although the assignments to system call numbers are different. A minority of system calls are present on some architectures and not others. It is desirable to keep the bulk of the system call vector in generic code while allowing the underlying architecture to add in its own system calls. This is done by having the vector initialization include, via a macro, architecture-specific slots.

There are a few other machine-dependent details like how a sigcontext_struct is passed into signal handlers, how a faulting address is made available to the SIGSEGV handler, and conversion between pt_regs and sigcontext_struct structures. These are handled by a small number of architecture-dependent macros and functions.


next up previous
Next: Other OS ports Up: Ports Previous: Ports
Jeff Dike 2000-08-23