*BSD News Article 83712


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From: j@ida.interface-business.de (J Wunsch)
Newsgroups: comp.unix.solaris,comp.unix.bsd.misc
Subject: Re: Solaris 2.6
Date: 27 Nov 1996 13:59:26 GMT
Organization: interface business GmbH, Dresden
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Reply-To: joerg_wunsch@interface-business.de (Joerg Wunsch)
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tls@panix.com (Thor Lancelot Simon) wrote:

> That's false.  When the NetBSD kernel moved from a Net2 code base to a
> 4.4-Lite code base, *no* user code needed to be recompiled to deal with the
> change in the size of off_t.  It doesn't "often" boil down to that, it never
> boils down to it.  The syscall number for "open" was changed, and programs
> which used the old syscall got the old behaviour -- still do, if the kernel's
> compiled with COMPAT_43 or COMPAT_09.

Btw., i basically agree with you, but just wanna mention that the
fathers of 4.4BSD forgot about one syscall: fcntl.  When used for file
locking, it also involves an off_t inside a structure.  This has been
overlooked, and as a result, 4.3BSD programs using fcntl file locking
were indeed broken under 4.4BSD.

-- 
J"org Wunsch					       Unix support engineer
joerg_wunsch@interface-business.de       http://www.interface-business.de/~j