On Thu, 19 Dec 1996, Michael Richardson wrote:

>   Or, could there be a system call which said: "I'm a Linux binary"
> and have this flag inheritted by all children? (Does the exec call
> for Linux default to being in Linux emulation?)

FWIW, A/UX does more or less exactly this with it's SVR2/BSD42/POSIX
compatibility flags.  Normally, exec resets these flags to the
default settings, but if the COMPAT_EXEC compatibility flag is set,
these settings are preserved.  FWIW, having done a _lot_ of work
under A/UX, I would vote against this approach.  Having a program
behave differently depending on who execed it can be a _pain_ to
track down.  Admittedly, this is more of an issue under A/UX, where
what is being inherited is a _very_ high level of granularity of
_source_ emulation, rather than simple either/or binary emulation.

--
				Jim Wise
				jim@santafe.arch.columbia.edu
				http://www.arch.columbia.edu/~jim
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