Tired of expensive, proprietary UNIX systems? Today’s IT professionals are making strategic investments in Linux, preferring its open architecture and low cost to the proprietary—and very expensive—UNIX platform. This session will target all those who are looking to move their software application from UNIX to SUSE Linux Enterprise. We will cover the programming languages, developer tools, and programming APIs that are available for many software applications types. We will also discuss how to plan and structure a porting project for SUSE Linux Enterprise Server.

1. Unix to SUSE Linux ®
Enterprise Server
Tools and Tips for a Successful Migration
Darren R. Davis PK Mishra
Sr. Manager ISV Engineering Principal Consulting Architect
ddavis@novell.com Novell India
pmishra@novell.com

2. Enterprises Are Migrating
from UNIX to Linux
Worldwide Server Operating Environment Forecast UNIX Migration Path by UNIX Platform
Paid Linux vs Paid UNIX Installed Base (million servers) 100% 2% 2%
4% 4% 4%
9 10% 6% 3%
8.3 90%
21% 23% Not sure
8 7.7 10% 15%
80%
Linux UNIX 26%
7 6.9 39%
70% 20% Other
Installed Base
6.0
6
60% 29% 26%
5.2
5 21%
50% 47% 6% Unix
4.4
4 3.8 40% 35%
3.2
3.0 2.9 30% Linux
3 2.8
2.6 2.5 2.4 40% 40% 40%
20% 36%
2
23% 20% Windows
2006 2007 2008 2009 2010 2011 2012 10%
Year 0%
Source: WW Client and Server Operating Environments 2008-2012 Forecast, IDC April 2008 Solaris SCO AIX Other Unix HP UX HP Tru64
(N=343) (N=20) (N=225) (N=43) (N=249) (N=52)
Source: IDC UNIX Migration Survey, 2006
Why are they migrating?
More innovation Better price Less risk
performance
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3. What is UNIX?
• UNIX is a registered trademark of the Open Group
– http://www.unix.org/ and http://www.opengroup.org/
– A set of specifications for defining operating system interfaces
> Single UNIX Specification Version 3
> UNIX 98, UNIX 03
> IEEE POSIX
> ISO C
– Products are certified by the Open Group to meet the UNIX
specification (AIX, HP/UX, Mac OS X, SCO, Solaris)
– UNIX was a product (SVR3, SVR4), but now it is a specification.
• Linux is based on the UNIX specifications
– Linux standard base
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4. Who Is Migrating?
www.novell.com/success
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5. Agenda
Server Migration Considerations
Application Porting Considerations
Tools and Resources
Next Steps
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6. Server Migration Considerations

7. System Administrator View
• Solaris Boot Manager vs GRUB / LILO
• Both support a variety of installation method – rapid install on
mass scale is easier for SUSE Linux Enterprise Server
®
• Filesystem types – safe, secure, scalable
– Solaris (ufs, zfs..) - SLES (ext3, ext4, reiserfs, xfs, ocfs2)
• /tmp by default in memory as tmpfs filesystem
• Similar content in directories /etc, /lib, /sbin, /usr, /opt etc.
• /boot and /proc contents are not so similar
• Init process is quite similar
• /usr/X11 is similar
– Solaris Motif and CDE interface – JDS / KDE / GNOME also
– SLES has no Motif / CDE
• Solaris packages are pkgadd format – SLES is rpm format
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8. System Administrator View (continued)
• YaST2
– A very productive GUI / CLI Tool for doing almost everything right from Installation
through Optimization
– Much better compared to default Solaris installation
– System Update / Patching / Addon mechanisms vary quite a bit
• Use YaST2 to configure and reuse most config files
– Networking
– DHCP / DNS / openLDAP / iptables
– Authentication / Kerberos / PAM configuration
– NIS Services
– NFS Services
– CIFS (Samba) Services
– Security, Firewall and Services Enabling
– MAC and DAC using AppArmor (SELinux)
– Modify / Reconfig various init and inet services
– System Log Management
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9. System Administrator View (continued)
• Device naming conventions vary
– Solaris /dev/dsk/c0t0d0p0 - SUSE /dev/sda1
®
– Do not assume similar device names
• MySQL / PostgreSQL behave similar – little variation in clustering
• Both support loadable module - In SUSE Linux Enterprise Server
compile kernel and kernel modules
– make config
– make all
• Backup / Restore strategy remain almost same
• Virtualization
– SLES supports Xen virtualization out-of-box
– VirtualBox runs on SLES11 with some effort – VM migration ok
• Most Common Open Source Management Tools
– Webmin, Nagios
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10. Application Porting Considerations

11. Application Porting
The process of taking a software application that is
built for a specific operating system and machine
architecture and moving that application to a new
operating system and possibly machine architecture.
For example, Solaris (UNIX) on SPARC to SUSE ®
Linux on x86-64.
11 © Novell, Inc. All rights reserved.

12. Application Porting Process
Application Scoping
Porting Analysis
Porting by Engineer
Testing and Certification
12 © Novell, Inc. All rights reserved.

13. Application Porting Considerations
Application programming language and compilers
Application build environment and tools
Platform dependent issues (machine architecture, OS, etc.)
Platform run-time services (system services and daemons)
Middleware dependencies (database, libraries, etc.)
User interface dependencies (libraries)
Application testing environment (test tools, resources)
Application support issues
13 © Novell, Inc. All rights reserved.

14. Application Programming
Language and Compilers
• GNU Compiler Collection - GCC
– C, C++, Fortran
– ISO C (C89, C95, C99) (Flags for setting standard)
– http://gcc.gnu.org
• SUSE Linux Enterprise 11 versions
®
– GCC 4.3 Compiler
– GDB 6.8 Debugger
– Glibc 2.8 Standard C Library
• Java
– SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 11 includes IBM Java 1.4.2
and IBM Java SE 6
– SUSE Linux Enterprise Desktop 11 includes Sun Java SE 6
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15. Application Build Environment and Tools
Application Build Environment
• Make
– gmake (GNU Make 3.81)
> http://www.gnu.org/software/make/
– Autoconf (GNU Autoconf)
• Source Code Control
– SVN (Subversion)
> http://subversion.tigris.org/
– CVS (Concurrent Versions System)
> http://www.nongnu.org/cvs/
• Commercial Build Tools
– IBM Rational Software on SUSE Linux Enterprise Server
®
– Sun Studio - C, C++, and Fortran for Solaris and Linux
15 © Novell, Inc. All rights reserved.

16. Application Build Environment and Tools
Application Build Tools
• GNU Binutils (binary utilities)
– /usr/bin/ar (utility for maintaining archives for static libs)
– /usr/bin/gprof (utility for displaying profiling information)
– /usr/bin/ld (the GNU linker)
– /usr/bin/nm (list symbols from object files)
– /usr/bin/objdump (display information from object files)
– /usr/bin/readelf (display information from ELF object files)
http://www.gnu.org/software/binutils/
16 © Novell, Inc. All rights reserved.

17. Application Build Environment and Tools
Application Build Tools (continued)
• The GNU Linker
– /usr/bin/ld
– Generally considered better to use the 'gcc' command
– pass options from 'gcc' to the linker 'ld' with '-Wl' option
– An example to build a Dynamic Shared Object Library
> gcc -fPIC -shared libhello.c -Wl,-soname,libhello.so.1 -o libhello
– Supports the use of linker scripts
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18. Application Build Environment and Tools
Application Build Tools—objdump
~/Projects/hello> objdump -s -j .comment hello
hello: file format elf64-x86-64
Contents of section .comment:
0000 00474343 3a202847 4e552920 342e312e .GCC: (GNU) 4.1.
0010 32203230 30373031 31352028 70726572 2 20070115 (prer
0020 656c6561 73652920 28535553 45204c69 elease) (SUSE Li
0030 6e757829 00004743 433a2028 474e5529 nux)..GCC: (GNU)
0040 20342e31 2e322032 30303730 31313520 4.1.2 20070115
0050 28707265 72656c65 61736529 20285355 (prerelease) (SU
0060 5345204c 696e7578 29000047 43433a20 SE Linux)..GCC:
18 © Novell, Inc. All rights reserved.

19. Application Build Environment and Tools
Application Build Tools—readelf
~/Projects/hello> readelf -e hello
ELF Header:
Magic: 7f 45 4c 46 02 01 01 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00
Class: ELF64
Data: 2's complement, little endian
Version: 1 (current)
OS/ABI: UNIX - System V
ABI Version: 0
Type: EXEC (Executable file)
Machine: Advanced Micro Devices X86-64
Version: 0x1
Entry point address: 0x400440
Start of program headers: 64 (bytes into file)
Start of section headers: 4768 (bytes into file)
Flags: 0x0
Size of this header: 64 (bytes)
Size of program headers: 56 (bytes)
Number of program headers: 9
Size of section headers: 64 (bytes)
Number of section headers: 38
Section header string table index: 35
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20. Platform Dependent Issues
• Machine Architecture
– 32-bit and 64-bit architecture
– Big/little Endian issues (SPARC to Intel)
• Operating System Differences
– Solaris / UNIX versus Linux signals
– Network programming API (sockets versus TLI)
– POSIX threads API (Linux threads, Solaris threads)
– Interprocess communication (IPC)
• Internationalization (I18N) and Localization (L10N)
– UNICODE, UTF-8, UTF-16/UCS-2, UTF-32/UCS-4
20 © Novell, Inc. All rights reserved.

21. Platform Dependent Issues
Machine Architecture
• Big / little Endian portability (byte ordering)
– Intel machines LE
– SPARC machines BE
– Network ordering is BE
– Watch data format between BE and LE machines
> binary data files
– Check for nonuniform data references
> Pointers
> Unions
> Structure packing
– Never cast a pointer to an integer and explicitly reference data
21 © Novell, Inc. All rights reserved.

22. Platform Dependent Issues
Machine Architecture (continued)
• Porting from Solaris on SPARC to Solaris on Intel
may be a good intermediate step to getting to Linux
on Intel (though extra step)
• 32-bit to 64-bit porting and migration
– GCC provides compiler switches '-m32' or '-m64'
– Common Issues
> Data type mismatch
> 64-bit architecture is LP64
> 32-bit architecture is ILP32
– Use 'sizeof' operator
– Use POSIX data types <sys/types.h>
> like pid_t for process ID's
– Ignoring signed extensions is a common issue
22 © Novell, Inc. All rights reserved.

23. Platform Run-time Services
• System daemons and resources
– System startup scripts
> Located in /etc/rc.d/
> Follow the LSB Standard
> http://refspecs.freestandards.org/LSB_3.1.0/LSB-Core-generic
/LSB-Core-generic/iniscrptact.html
> http://www.novell.com/coolsolutions/feature/11256.html
> Adds commands in comment blocks
– Account for all run-time services used by application
> NFS
> INETD
> And others...
23 © Novell, Inc. All rights reserved.

24. Middleware Dependencies
• GNU glibc C Library
– http://www.gnu.org/software/libc/
– Follows standards (ISO C 99, POSIX, SUS, UNIX 98)
– Useful commands
> /usr/bin/ldd (display shared library dependencies)
> /lib/libc.so.6 (displays information about glibc)
• GNU Standard C++ Library
– http://gcc.gnu.org/libstdc++/
– ISO 14882 Standard C++ Library
– Part of GCC
24 © Novell, Inc. All rights reserved.

25. Middleware Dependencies
Useful Commands
~/Projects/hello> ldd hello
libc.so.6 => /lib64/libc.so.6 (0x00002b25b80d0000)
/lib64/ld-linux-x86-64.so.2 (0x00002b25b7fb4000)
~/Projects/hello>
25 © Novell, Inc. All rights reserved.

26. Middleware Dependencies
Useful Commands (continued)
~/Projects/hello> /lib64/libc.so.6
GNU C Library development release version 2.4 (20070503), by Roland McGrath et al.
Copyright (C) 2006 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
This is free software; see the source for copying conditions.
There is NO warranty; not even for MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A
PARTICULAR PURPOSE.
Configured for x86_64-suse-linux.
Compiled by GNU CC version 4.1.2 20070115 (prerelease) (SUSE Linux).
Compiled on a Linux 2.6.16 system on 2007-05-03.
Available extensions:
crypt add-on version 2.1 by Michael Glad and others
GNU Libidn by Simon Josefsson
GNU libio by Per Bothner
NIS(YP)/NIS+ NSS modules 0.19 by Thorsten Kukuk
Native POSIX Threads Library by Ulrich Drepper et al
BIND-8.2.3-T5B
Thread-local storage support included.
For bug reporting instructions, please see:
<http://www.gnu.org/software/libc/bugs.html>.
~/Projects/hello>
26 © Novell, Inc. All rights reserved.

27. Middleware Dependencies
Databases
• Database support included
– MySQL (Version 5 in SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 11)
®
– PostgreSQL (Version 8.3.3 in SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 11)
– Berkeley DB (Version 4.5 in SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 11)
• Commercial databases available
– Oracle
– SAP
– Enterprise DB (PostgreSQL)
• Database interfaces
– ODBC
– JDBC
27 © Novell, Inc. All rights reserved.

28. Middleware Dependencies
Summary
• Many open source libraries and middleware
– Check the SUSE Linux Enterprise SDK
®
– Check the LSB specification for libraries
– Follow the LSB guidelines for use if making portable application
(library not in the LSB)
– CORBA ORB (orbit is open source, commercial available)
– Curses applications use ncurses
• Commercial libraries and Middleware
– Make sure they support SUSE Linux Enterprise
– Account for third-party dependencies in porting
28 © Novell, Inc. All rights reserved.

29. User Interface Dependencies
• Motif
– The Open Motif runtime environment
> http://www.motifzone.net/
• CDE (Common Desktop Environment)
®
– Commercial version available for Linux
• GTK (The GIMP Tool Kit)
– http://www.gtk.org/
– Used by the GNOME Project
> http://www.gnome.org/
29 © Novell, Inc. All rights reserved.

30. Application Testing Environment
• GDB (GNU Debugger)
– http://sourceware.org/gdb/
– GUI Front End DDD (Data Display Debugger)
> http://www.gnu.org/software/ddd/
• Memory debugging
– Glibc provides memory debugging options
> mcheck, mtrace, MALLOC_CHECK
– Electric fence
– Valgrind
30 © Novell, Inc. All rights reserved.

31. Application Testing Environment
(continued)
• Kernel debugging in SUSE Linux Enterprise
®
– SystemTap
– Crash
– kdump
• Application profiling
– GNU Profiler 'gprof' part of binutils
– 'strace' (system function call tracer)
– 'ltrace' (library call tracer)
– OProfile (system-wide profiler)
– Linux commands
> iostat, vmstat, ps, top
31 © Novell, Inc. All rights reserved.

32. Application Testing Environment
(continued)
• Commercial Tools
– Allinea DDT
– IBM Rational Purify
– Intel Software Group
– SGI ProPack
– TotalView Technologies Debugger
– TotalView Technologies MemoryScape
32 © Novell, Inc. All rights reserved.

33. Application Support Issues
• Defect reporting
– Bugzilla
• Maintain SUSE Linux Enterprise Server
®
test environment
– Reproduce issues
– Possibly maintain Solaris environment to compare
• Maintain SUSE Linux Enterprise Server
build environment
– Rebuild update versions of applications
• Novell Technical Support
®
– To report any issues with SUSE Linux Enterprise
33 © Novell, Inc. All rights reserved.

34. Tools and Resources

35. SUSE Linux Enterprise SDK
®
• C and C++ compiler in base SLE
• SDK contains the development packages
– Headers
– Development libraries
• Many extra packages
• Download from Novell ®
• http://developer.novell.com/wiki/index.php/SLES_SDK
35 © Novell, Inc. All rights reserved.

36. Books
UNIX to Linux Porting
Prentice Hall, ISBN 0-13-187109-9
36 © Novell, Inc. All rights reserved.

37. Internet Websites
• Novell Developer Community
®
– http://developer.novell.com/wiki/index.php/Developer_Home
• Novell Porting and Migration Center
– http://developer.novell.com/wiki/index.php/Porting_and_Migration
• Linux Foundation Developer Network
– http://ldn.linuxfoundation.org/
• openSUSE and openSUSE Build Service
®
– http://www.opensuse.org/
37 © Novell, Inc. All rights reserved.

38. Linux Foundation
LSB Application Checker
• Application details:
– Web UI based on embedded web server
– Both installable and unpack-and-run versions
• Main features:
– Accepts application as a set of components: binaries and .so
possibly in various directories or/and packed in .rpm / tar.gz
(arbitrary mix)
– Visualizes external dependencies (libraries and interfaces) of
the application (internal dependencies between components
are excluded)
– For libraries, it highlights differences between required
(DT_NEEDED) and actually used libraries
38 © Novell, Inc. All rights reserved.

39. Linux Foundation
LSB Application Checker (continued)
• Results from using
– Local application analysis
– Optional submit info to the Linux Foundation to include in the
Database Navigator
– Used to apply for LSB-compliance certification
• http://ldn.linuxfoundation.org/lsb/check-your-app
39 © Novell, Inc. All rights reserved.

40. Linux Foundation
LSB Database Navigator
• Interactive reference guide for Linux
API / ABI elements:
– Allows you to browse applications or distributions
– Information about the Linux Ecosystem
– Show Libraries and Interfaces used or available
– Great for understanding how applications are built for LSB
– Part of the Linux Developer Network
• http://www.linuxfoundation.org/navigator/
40 © Novell, Inc. All rights reserved.

41. Next Steps

42. Next Steps
OnDemand Webcast—The Business Case for Migrating from
Solaris to SUSE Linux Enterprise Server
®
www.novell.com/idc
Other UNIX to Linux migration resources
www.novell.com/solaris
Limited time offer—Zero Risk Migration Assessment
www.novell.com/promo/100/solaris.html
42 © Novell, Inc. All rights reserved.

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