As some of you might be aware, I have been working on Linux
compatibility on the powerpc. Initial support is here, but there are a
lot of bugs to be fixed before we can run binaries like Netscape or the
JDK.

Debugging Netscape or JDK related problems is not easy as theses are not
opensource programs. Today, JDK's commands are stuck with a bug in rt
signals emulation, and Netscape has a problem with a setgid call that
turned mysteriously into a chown call (you can read messages about that
one in tech-kern:
http://mail-index.netbsd.org/tech-kern/2001/01/26/0000.html)

My idea now is trying various Linux commands and fixing bugs encoutered
with them. I hope I'll be able to find the same bug that causes Netscape
and the JDK to fail, but in an opensource program.

If you want to help, check-out NetBSD-current, add the COMPAT_LINUX to
your kernel config file, build it, install the emulation/linuxppc_lib
package, link /emul/linux to /usr/pkg/emul/linux, grab executables for
LinuxPPC, and try running them. (NB: use the pkgtools/rpm2pkg package to
extract RPM files, it's faster than "rpm2cpio foo.rpm | cpio -i")

If it works, fine. If it fails, let me know, we have a bug to crush :o)

About JDK: I'm working on Blackdown's JDK-1.3.0, which you can download
at ftp://ftp.linuxppc.org/users/geiseri/kde2/jdk-1.3.0-FCSa.ppc.rpm. If
you encouter more success with another package, tell me. If you have
documentation about how rt_sigaction, rt_sigprocmask, and other Linux's
rt_* stuff work, tell me. I can't test here, because I don't know how to
make a test program with theses system calls.

-- 
Emmanuel Dreyfus.  Cette signature vous est fournie telle quelle, sans 
aucune garantie de fonctionnement. En la lisant, vous acceptez 
implicitement tous les degats qu'elle pourrait causer, materiellement 
ou logiciellement.                   p99dreyf@criens.u-psud.fr