OKP Features

The standard interprocess communication (IPC) facilities can be used to communicate between processes running in different personalities, so new applications can be written for UnixWare 7 and share data with legacy applications running under OKP.

Many of the OpenServer developer tools will also work under OKP, but OKP is not intended as a development or maintenance environment for OpenServer applications (see ``OKP Limitations'').

Installation utilities

If you migrate an existing OpenServer system to OKP, all installed applications are migrated as part of that process. OKP also supports common OpenServer installation utilities for installing OpenServer applications under /openserver after you have already populated the OKP environment. See ``Installing OpenServer Applications under OKP''

Identifying OpenServer binaries

The UnixWare 7 and kernels automatically invoke special kernel processing when executing an OpenServer application. They recognize all COFF binaries as OpenServer applications and detect a special mark in the header section of an ELF binary that identifies it as an OpenServer application; see elfmark(1).

OpenServer commands

OKP provides access to most OpenServer runtime utilities that are required for application deployment. Many of these commands have specific behaviors or flags on which OpenServer applications rely or are not part of the native UnixWare 7 environment. These commands are accessed automatically when an application is executed through the openserver(1) command, which calls chroot(2) to change the root directory for the command and maps other OpenServer environment characteristics appropriately. This enables OpenServer applications that depend on literal paths to execute correctly under OKP and prevents namespace conflicts with native UnixWare 7 shells and utilities.

Native support for OpenServer library functions and system calls

OKP includes specially-modified versions of the current OpenServer libraries, optimized to run on UnixWare 7.

Note the following exceptions

• Some undocumented OpenServer flags for the mmap(2) system call functions are not supported.

• The SUDS system call extensions (aio, sem, latch, timers) are not supported. However, most applications are coded to call alternatives if such calls are not available and so will run under OKP.

• Some old XENIX facilities that are included in OpenServer are not currently available to OKP applications. Examples include mandatory file and record locking, XENIX semaphores, and XENIX shared data. XENIX binaries cannot be run in the current OKP implementation.

• Specific OpenServer system administration and system debugging system call support is not provided. Specifically, some of the functions to ptrace(S) and waitsys(S) are not supported, and some sysi86(S) features such as PIPE are not supported.

Application migration utilities

Use the osragent(1M) and migrate(1M) utilities to populate the OKP environment.

OpenServer terminal definitions

All OpenServer terminfo files as well as scoterm(XC) are supported when running OKP.

OpenServer languages, locales, and message catalogs

OpenServer style internationalization and localization are mapped to the corresponding UnixWare 7 locales by the openserver(1) command used to execute OpenServer applications under OKP.

Ability to launch applications at init time

Scripts executed by the OpenServer /etc/rc2 script can be executed under OKP without modification.

Security

The OKP migration utilities adjust OpenServer applications to run under the native UnixWare 7 security provisions with restrictions similar to those that are provided by the OpenServer Trusted Computing Base (TCB). To do this, OKP creates the /openserver/etc/default/security file with TCBFILES=OFF set to disable the TCB. This prevents potential conflicts that could arise between the OpenServer and UnixWare 7 security mechanisms. System security for applications running under OKP is managed through UnixWare 7 administrative tools; see Managing system security for information about the UnixWare 7 security facilities. Limited support is provided for the getluid(S) security call in ELF binaries. The OpenServer stopio(S) call is not supported.

SecureWare commands are not supported.

Synchronization facilities

OKP includes facilities to facilitate and synchronize OKP with the native UnixWare 7 and LKP personalities. Some OpenServer system files such as utmp, wtmp, utmpx, and wtmpx live in different locations and have different formats on UnixWare 7. The UnixWare 7 okpfud(1M) utility synchronizes files between native UnixWare 7 and OKP.