A brief overview of the Linux-ABI modules
2001-July-19
Christoph Hellwig, <hch@caldera.de>

Linux-ABI consists of a number of loadable kernel modules (you can also
compile it directly into the kernel, but no one actually does).   This
document is intended to give a brief overview on the aviable modules
and how they can be classified in groups.


=== Binary format modules

Some of the personalities supported by Linux-ABI use different binary
formats than the ELF format that is used by Linux native binaries.
The follwoing binary format modules do exists:

  o binfmt_coff

	This modules supports the COFF binary format as used by elder
	SysV-derivate operating systems.  It is used by the SVR3,
	SCOSVR3, ISC and Wyse personalities.

  o This module is inetended for loading X.out binaries generated for
 	the Xenix operating system.

These modules have to be loaded manually before using them.



=== Personality modules

Personality modules contain the the personality implementation and are
thus the hearts of Linux-ABI.  Additionally most personal;ity modules
contain syscalls only used by that particular personality.  There are
a lot of personality modules:

  o abi-ibcs

	Support for plain SVR3/SVR4 as specified in iBCS2 or iABI4.
	Additionally this module contains the Xenix and ISC personalities,
	but these should be moved away from here.

  o abi-sco

	This module implements the SCO Unix 3.x/ODT and OSR5 personalities.

  o abi-solaris

	The Solaris 2 emulator.

  o abi-uw7

	SCO UnixWare 7 / Caldera OpenUnix 8 emulator.

  o abi-wyse

	Support for Wyse V/386 ant it's multiprocessor variant.


=== Backend modules

As a lot of the functionality provided by the binary format modules is
common to more than one of those, most of this functionality is moved to
backend modules. There are only a few backend modules:

  o abi-machdep

	The machine depandand part of Linux-ABI (in fact currently
	Linux-ABI is i386-specific, but that _will_ change).

  o abi-svr4

	Most of the syscalls use by all or many of the SVR3/SVR4 derivates.

  o abi-socket

	4BSD-style socket interface, currently only used by the Wyse
	emulation.  This will probably go away.