The NetBSD port for i386 can execute a great number of native Linux programs, using the Linux emulation layer. Generally, when you think about emulation you imagine something slow and inefficient because, often, emulations must reproduce hardware instructions and even architectures (usually from old machines) in software. In the case of the Linux emulation this is radically different: it is only a thin software layer, mostly for system calls which are already very similar between the two systems. The application code itself is processed at the full speed of your CPU, so you don't get a degraded performance with the Linux emulation and the feeling is exactly the same as for native NetBSD applications.
This chapter explains how to configure the Linux emulation with an example: the installation of the well known Acrobat Reader version 4 program.
The installation of the Linux emulation is described in the compat_linux(8) man page; using the package system only two steps are needed.
Configuring the kernel.
Installing the Linux libraries.
If you use a GENERIC kernel you don't need to do anything because Linux compatibility is already enabled.
If you use a customized kernel, check that the following options are enabled:
option COMPAT_LINUX option EXEC_ELF32
when you have compiled a kernel with the previous options you can start installing the necessary software.
You can get the linux libraries from any Linux distribution, provided it's not too old, but the suggested method is to use the package system and install the libraries automatically (the Suse libraries are used.) When you install the libraries, the following happens:
A secondary root directory is created which will be used for Linux programs. This directory is /emul/linux/. The Linux programs in emulation mode will use this directory as their root directory.
The shared libraries for Linux are installed. Most applications are linked dynamically and expect to find the necessary libraries on the system. For example, for Acrobat Reader, if you go to the /usr/pkgsrc/print/acroread and give the make depends command, you get the following message:
===> acroread-4.0 requires Linux glibc2 libraries - see compat_linux(8).
Both operations will be handled automatically by the package system, without the need of manual intervention from the user (I suppose that, by now, you have already begun to love the package system...)
To install the libraries, a program must be installed that handles the RPM format: it is rpm-2.5.4, which will be used to extract the Suse libraries.
Next the suse_base package must be installed. The Suse RPM files can be downloaded by the package system or, if you have a Suse CD, you can copy them in the /usr/pkgsrc/distfiles/suse directory and then run make and make install.
With the same method install suse_compat, suse_libc5 and suse_x11. The final configuration is:
# pkg_info -a | grep suse suse_base-6.1p1 Linux compatibility package suse_x11-6.1p1 Linux compatibility package for X11 binaries suse_compat-6.1p1 Linux compatibility package with old shared libraries suse_libc5-6.1p1 Linux compatibility package for libc5 binaries
Now everything is ready for the installation of the Acrobat Reader program (or other Linux programs.) Change to /usr/pkgsrc/print/acroread and give the usual commands.
make make install
The Acrobat Reader install scripts asks you to accept the licence. When you have done this you can start the program.
If we examine the outcome of the installation of the Linux libraries and programs we find that /emul/linux is a symbolic link pointing to /usr/pkg/emul/linux, where the following directories have been created:
bin/ boot/ cdrom/ dev/ etc/ floppy/ home/ lib/ mnt/ opt/ proc/ root/ sbin/ usr/
Note: please alwayr refer to /emul/linux and not to /usr/pkg/emul/linux. The latter is an implementation detail and may change in the future.
How much space is required for the Linux emulation software? On my system I get the following figure:
# cd /usr/pkg/emul # du -k linux ... 60525 linux/
Acrobat Reader, the program, has been installed in the usual directory for package binaries: /usr/pkg/bin/.