Date: Tue, 7 Jul 1998 06:41:17 +0000 (GMT) From: Terry Lambert <tlambert@primenet.com> To: lile@stdio.com (Larry S. Lile) Cc: sbabkin@dcn.att.com, hackers@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: Object library formats Message-ID: <199807070641.XAA02881@usr06.primenet.com> In-Reply-To: <Pine.SUN.3.91.980706134243.3192D-100000@heathers2.stdio.com> from "Larry S. Lile" at Jul 6, 98 01:48:39 pm
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> > Is Olicom part of Olivetti or something different ? > > I have no idea as to Olicom's lineage. ] Olicom A/S was founded in Denmark in 1985 and has its world headquarters ] in suburban Copenhagen. The Company’s headquarters for the Americas, ] Olicom, Inc., is located in metropolitan Dallas, Texas. ] ] LASAT Communications, a division of The Olicom Group, develops and ] markets a full line of LASAT-branded modem and ISDN products. Olicom ] maintains R&D centers in the U.S. and Europe. The Company trades on the ] NASDAQ National Market System under the symbol OLCMF and the ] Copenhagen Stock Exchange. 8-). > > A COFF binary file can be converted into a.out without much problems, > > I have even written that converter once but it was lost during a crash > > and I > > felt no urge to write it again. The problem is that this driver is > > probably > > relying on the SysV Device Driver Interface to call the kernel library > > functions that are missing in FreeBSD. For a network driver this is for > > sure because it should use the STREAMS framework which is not used > > in FreeBSD. > > It is not a network driver in and of itself, it is just the hardware > interface library. In other words, it is just enough to glue a driver > to the card. So the question still stands, can I link it into the > kernel and write a driver around it? I think you can. The worst it will expect is the DDI on top, which really means "how Larry calls into the thing" and the DKI on the bottom, which may mean "you have to support some buffer allocation routines and things like bcopy/bzero/etc.", most of which FreeBSD alreay supports, or which is pretty easy to fake using wrapper routines. > > P.S. A not stripped object file may be very useful for reverse > > engineering. > > I have no intrest in reverse engineering their code, I just want to > get a driver written for their card after I finish my driver for > the IBM shared ram token ring cards. The IBM driver is just about > to start passing packets, now that I have talked to the local network > guru about SNAP headers and the like. The real issues here are: 1) Once you link a kernel to it, can you distribute the kernel, or does everyone who wants to use it have to link it as well. 2) Is the object file redistributable, in ELF or in COFF->a,out form, such that someone with a stallion board an a token ring card can use a driver that depends on the library. In other words, mostly legal, not technical. Terry Lambert terry@lambert.org --- Any opinions in this posting are my own and not those of my present or previous employers. To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-hackers" in the body of the message
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