Re: Install i386 or amd64?

["Thomas Mueller" <mueller6724%bellsouth.net@localhost>]

On Mon, Feb 03, 2014 at 02:55:51PM +0100, Ottavio Caruso wrote:

> > 1) If Wine requires kernel support that is only available on i386, how
> > would a /compat/i386 solve the problem?
        
> It won't.  I believe the main blocker is still the handling of GDT/LDT in
> the kernel.  Before I get accused of being cryptic (again) these are
> special hardware tables to do with mapping of memory, wine uses them to
> map things as they are in windows - these tables are different on amd64
> hence the issue.
        
> > 2) Wouldn't there be then two layers of emulation, ie 64 to 32, and 32
> > to Windows? Is it worth the pain?
        
> It doesn't quite work that way.  Event emulating 32bit netbsd on 64bit
> netbsd really just makes calls to the underlying 64bit kernel functions
> it is just that care is taken to ensure that all the return values going
> back to the 32bit application are valid.  Technically, wine does pretty
> much the same thing, it is what is called a call-gate emulator.  Windows
> system calls are "mapped" (in very loose terms) onto the underlying unix
> equivalents with a bunch of glue code so that from a system call level
> things look like the standard windows API, close enough that a windows
> application can use that API and mostly correct things happen.

--
> Brett Lymn

My information on running i386-wine from amd64 in /compat/i386 is from FreeBSD 
wiki, which does not mean it works in any other BSD.

I would install i386-wine on a separate i386 installation, so even if that 
doesn't work when mounted on /compat/i386 from amd64, it might still work from 
i386 standalone.

Anyway, how do COMPAT_NETBSD32, COMPAT_LINUX and COMPAT_LINUX32 work in amd64, 
or how would I make NetBSD-i386, Linux-amd64 and Linux-i386 executables work 
from NetBSD-amd64?  Or would it be nonworkable?

Tom