Re: linux on nt.

bofh@snoopy.virtual.net.au
Wed, 19 Feb 97 14:22:58 +1000


>> > i came across a press release that a company (Softway) will be developing a
>> > unix process for windows nt.
>>
>> Someone did this quite a while ago. In theory you could host Linux on top
>> of NT. Beats me why you'd want to slow Linux down so much however. I've also
>> no idea how you would persuade our dear friend Bill to give you enough API
>> info to do it

>Anyone consider the feasability of running NT as a Linux process? Assuming
>this wasn't sick and insane and there was adequate documentation, would
>there be a (unavoidable) technical limitation?

There is no technical limitation stopping you. What you would have to do first is write a binary loader which can load the PE (Portable Executable format used in NT and Win32s - there's a link to doco on it at http://www.virtual.net.au/hotstuff/comp/program.html). Writing the binary loader shouldn't be that hard as there are 2 examples of binary loaders in the kernel (ELF and a.out - Java doesn't really count). Then you have to decide how to get the system calls to emulate the Win32 environment. I suggest having a Win32 single-server process running as a daemon (you could have the kernel run it when the first PE program is loaded and then have it exit when the last one exits) and then writing some DLLs (AFAIK all NT API calls go through DLLs) to give the system call interface - those DLLs would then validate parameters and then call the single-server to do the real work.

I have answered messages and Usenet posting such as yours on several occasions, but no-one has followed it up. So I'm putting it in a web page. The URL is: http://www.virtual.net.au/~rjc/LinuxPE.html
Currently the web page only contains the text of this message, but if the project goes somewhere then it'll have more.

Russell Coker