Re: [Sheflug] LONGER - SuSE 7.2 kernel source

[Will Newton <xxxxx [at] xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

On Tuesday 16 Oct 2001 3:36 pm, you wrote:

> Prescript: I read that I shouldn't use gcc 2.95.3 to compile the kernel,
> but rather gcc 2.91.66.  As it happens I have a working binary of gcc
> 2.91.66 but does it depend on different libraries than those distributed
> with gcc 2.95.3 ?  You probably get the idea of how little I know about
> this sort of thing.  I'll try it anyway but if things compile without
> error there may be other problems down the line I won't spot.

GCC 2.95.x (x < 4) are all OK. Even 2.96 works fine. GCC 3.0 almost compiles 
it but is pretty much guaranteed to bugger up something.

> I suspect this is a new SuSE add-on.  Whole new section of config, with
> no documentation at all.  Sounds scary, kept it off.  Heaven knows what
> will be in SuSE 7.3...

It's a mainline kernel option. It basically allows running of binaries built 
for e.g. SCO UNIX. You are very unlikely to come across such a beast (the 
number of non-free i386 Unices these days is pretty small) and ISTR the code 
has not been maintained in a long time, so may not in fact work.

> Finally, what is shmfs?  Could that be getting in the way?
> df | grep shmfs gives
>
> shmfs  1042836         0   1042836   0% /dev/shm

You need this. Well, you need it to run a lot of larger applications. shm 
(shared memory?) is an IPC mechanism that things like XFree86 use to create a 
shared memory mapping so they can chuck data from one process to another at 
high speed. XFree86 will work without it, but it will complain. Other things 
will fall over entirely. So it is something you need.
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