Application Note 0001		Rev. C		May 30, 2005

Installing ASEM-51 V1.3 under FreeBSD (i386)

FreeBSD users may wish to run ASEM-51 V1.3 on their system. It is possible to run the Linux implementation of ASEM-51 under the FreeBSD Linux emulator. For this, perform the following steps:

1. Ensure that the Linux emulator is set up properly. Login as root and invoke

       kldstat

   If a kernel module linux.ko is loaded, the linux emulator is installed and active. If not, install the linux emulation package, if necessary. It is located in /usr/ports/emulators/linux_base. Then load the kernel module:

       kldload linux

   Be sure to load the module also at boot time.
   For this, edit /etc/rc.conf and include a line like

       linux_enable="YES"

2. Download the tarball of ASEM-51 V1.3 for Linux

       asem51-1.3-ELF.tar.gz

   and install it as described for Linux systems in the file README.1ST provided. Before running the installation script install.sh, it has to be adapted to FreeBSD, however: change line 62

       chgrp -R root $ASEM/* || exit $?
   to
       chgrp -R wheel $ASEM/* || exit $?

3. If you are invoking asem after a "successful" installation, it will probably abort with the following error message:

       ELF binary type "0" not known.

   In this case the binaries have to be branded for Linux first!
   Change the OS_ABI (byte 7 in the ELF header) of the executables:

       cd /usr/local/share/asem-51/1.3
       brandelf -t Linux asem hexbin customiz

4. The reset51 program and the boot scripts are strictly Linux-specific.
   Do not invoke them under FreeBSD! Better defuse them with

       chmod a-x reset51 boot upload*

Now most of ASEM-51 is ready to use under FreeBSD 4.x or 5.x.
For further details refer to the Linux part of the ASEM-51 documentation.

Thanks a lot to Raymundo M. Vega for reporting this problem (and the solution)!

The next ASEM-51 version (1.4, or something) will also be available as a native implementation for FreeBSD (i386). Stay tuned!

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