Porting Enterprise Apps from UNIX to Linux

By Martyn Honeyford
2005-04-17

File System, Usage Parameters, Stacks

My group discovered a number of diverse things during its porting activities, and because they are relatively concise, I've gathered them together here.

Support for the file system
If your application needs to use facilities such as logging and writing data files, file system-based support is easier to install, configure, and administer compared with the raw I/O.

System-usage parameters
Direct system calls to gather information about parameters (like memory heap usage) don't seem to exist. /proc filesystem support needs to be used to determine such parameters.

Stackwalk
Currently, support for calls like pstack is available only on the Intel architecture; it is in the process of being developed on other architectures. To get stack traces programmatically, programmers might have to implement their own versions using the ABI definitions for the yet-to-be-supported architectures.

Another option is to use gdb-based scripts to get the stack information. The stack information is usually required for servicability of the product. gdb is more standardized across different architectures and distributions.

Tutorial Pages:
» A Practical Checklist, Tips, and Insight Drawn from Experience
» Get the Build System Working
» Decide on a Viable Operating Environment
» Architecture-Specific Changes
» Choose an IPC Mechanism
» Select the Threading Model
» File System, Usage Parameters, Stacks
» Memory Maps and Using Shared Memory Segments
» Signaling
» Configure Kernel Karameters
» Parser Tools like lex/yacc
» Globalization Issues
» Security Concerns
» Locating Installed Packages and Variable Data
» Testing
» There's a Port in Every Storm
» Resources

First published by IBM DeveloperWorks

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