----- Original Message -----
From: Pierre Bourgin <Pierre.Bourgin@lip6.fr>
To: Marc Schneiders <marc@oldserver.demon.nl>
Cc: <netbsd-help@netbsd.org>
Sent: Wednesday, August 18, 1999 6:59 PM
Subject: Re: ld.so and elf in real life (well mine at least)


| On Wed, 18 Aug 1999, Marc Schneiders wrote:
|
|  > I've read and reread the recent postings to this list about ld.so and
elf and
|  > tried to understand them. I have also studied the elf-FAQ. Nevertheless
I am
|  > completely lost.
|  > Situation: installed snapshot of 4 July on an i386 (AMD K6-233 etc,
seems
|  > unimportant), got the tar files from current, set them up, new kernel,
make
|  > build. No problems (complaints about IPv6 at boot, but no harm for
now). The
|  > one program I would like to mainly run on this machine at present is
Seti. This
|  > is apparently impossible. ld.so. Right.
|  > Now the very same program runs fine with 1.4 release on another
i386-machine.
|  > Having some experience with windows dll files I tried to fix things by
copying
|  > ld.so as well as ld.so.conf from that machine to the new one. No help.
Wrong
|  > version of libm.so (even if both numbers are identical!). Moved that
one as
|  > well. Complaint about the next. So I suppose this is not the way to do
it.
|  > Now I am not a programmer, nor do I have the brains to become one. I
would like
|  > to run this program though. I cannot compile it myself, because it is
only
|  > available in binary form. Any advise?
|  >
|  > Marc Schneiders
|  > marc@oldserver.demon.nl
|  >
|
| As I remember, I saw some help in the file :
|
| ftp://ftp.netbsd.org/pub/NetBSD/arch/i386/snapshot/07041999/README
|
| that explains how to pass from an aout system to an ELF one.
|
| In particular, there are some notes on using an a.out program and
| a.out libs (use of '/emul/aout' or something like this).
|
|
| Hope this help !

I suppose it may very well (have to study it tomorrow), even though this is
about the other way around: upgrading to ELF, while I want to 'degrade' my
system to use some aout. Should have read that file of course when setting
up the snapshot. Apologies. And thanks for the reply!
Still, it seems a big 'break', the introduction of ELF without some
'support' for those poor people like me who still want to run precompiled
only aout binaries. Just saw a similar case in a port-i386 list message. I
am not against progress, especially when I do not fully understand it (sic).
I hope it doesn't scare off though other potential new users. You will not
get rid of me, because I recently acquired an old Sparc IPC :-)

Marc Schneiders
marc@oldserver.demon.nl