COMPAT_ULTRIX(8)

✨ NAME ✨

okay so this is the COMPAT_ULTRIX(8) page from the System Manager's Manual, and the main character is compat_ultrix — the setup procedure for ULTRIX compatibility on MIPS and VAX architectures. 💖

🌸 DESCRIPTION 🌸

NetBSD/mips and NetBSD/vax architectures can run Risc ULTRIX and VAX ULTRIX executables, respectively. slay for them. 💅

⚠️ legal vibe check: you have to worry about the legal issues of ensuring that you have a right to use any ULTRIX binaries on your machine. That part is on you, bestie.

no cap: most executables will work. The exceptions include programs that use proprietary, ULTRIX-specific features (LAT, CI support, DECnet support) and various system calls, ioctl()'s, or ULTRIX kernel semantics that are difficult to emulate (e.g. ULTRIX packetfilter) or buggy (e.g. ULTRIX NIS). 😭

All ULTRIX executables are static, so no shared libraries are required for ULTRIX compatibility. iconic. However, ULTRIX is lowkey based on a 4.3BSD alpha release. the way that ULTRIX commands and libraries are often much older than their NetBSD or even SunOS 4.x equivalents, and may require incompatible configuration files — it's giving ancient lore, ngl.

🎀 SYSTEM CONFIGURATION FILES 🎀

Set up resolv.conf and svc.conf as below:

# mkdir -p /emul/ultrix/etc
# cd /emul/ultrix/etc
# egrep 'domain|nameserver' /etc/resolv.conf > ./resolv.conf
# cp -p /usr/share/examples/emul/ultrix/etc/*     ./

🦋 /etc/resolv.conf 🦋

The ULTRIX resolver library only understands domain and nameserver lines in resolv.conf(5). You should create a copy of /etc/resolv.conf containing only those commands and put it in /emul/ultrix/etc/resolv.conf. Note that the domain search order used by ULTRIX executables may not be the same as native binaries; there is no good way around this. 🙈

🧚 /etc/svc.conf 🧚

ULTRIX uses /etc/svc.conf to select an ordered search of NIS, Hesiod, or local flat-file mappings. You should create an /emul/ultrix/etc/svc.conf specifying either local files or bind (DNS) lookups for all ULTRIX name services. periodt.

🌈 SEE ALSO 🌈

• resolv.conf(5)

💀 BUGS 💀

• RISC ULTRIX NIS (YP) is known to not work. The ULTRIX NIS libraries have a consistent endian-ness bug. ULTRIX NIS client will not interoperate with the NetBSD ypbind(8) process. The only workaround is to use /etc/svc.conf to disable NIS (YP). 😭
• The ndbm hashed-password file used by ULTRIX are incompatible with the db hashed-password file used by NetBSD. There is no good solution for this. NIS would be a good one, if ULTRIX NIS worked. 💅
• The API used by Xservers to talk to the kernel is currently compatible with ULTRIX 4.1. An implementation of the ULTRIX 4.2 Xws interface (used by X11R6) is in progress.
• A complete list of things which fail to work in ULTRIX compatibility mode should be added here.

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🌸 okay that's the whole page, bestie! this one is the Debian version, dated January 16, 1999, and it's literally COMPAT_ULTRIX(8) — bye and slay 💅✨