[Unix-jun72] Dealing with 0407 a.outs in the V1 kernel

[wkt@tuhs.org (Warren Toomey)]

On Sat, May 03, 2008 at 10:35:47AM -0400, Brad Parker wrote:
> And it runs, but nothing happens.  I have not debugged it much.  Wish we
> had a working v1 as.

I think getting the V1 kernel to grok 0407 a.outs should be easier. Here are
snippets from the V1 and V2 a.out man pages:

1st Edition                               2nd Edition
-----------                               -----------
The header always contains 6 words:       The header always contains 8 words:
 1  a "br .+14" instruction [205(8)]       1  a "br .+20" instruction [207(8)]
 2  the size of the program text           2 the size of the program text
 3  the size of the symbol table           3 the size of the initialised data
 4  the size of the relocation bits area   4 the size of the uninit (bss) data
 5  the size of a data area                5 the size of the symbol table
 6  a zero word, unused at present         6 the entry location, always 0
                                           7 stack size required, always 0
                                           8 a flag indicating relocation bits
                                             have been suppressed


When I wrote the Apout support for V1 and V2, I found that all of an 0405
a.out was loaded into memory including the header, but the 0407 a.out is
loaded into memory MINUS the 8-word header.

So, I'm guessing, in the kernel's sysexec: code, where it does

        cmp     core,$405       / br .+14 is first instruction if file is
                                / standard a.out format

we have to add a section that recognises 0407, adds up the size of text,
data and bss (words 2, 3, 4), saves that in u.count, and loads the
rest of the a.out into memory but with the 8-word header removed.

Cheers,
	Warren