32-bit compatibility

[John Baldwin]

On Wednesday 26 May 2004 07:35 pm, freebsd-amd64 at davehart.net wrote:
> > On Wed, May 26, 2004 at 11:03:35AM -0400, Luke Beaulieu wrote:
> > > 	I'm currently building a web server that will be setup with
> > > FreeBSD/amd64. It must run Apache with mod_ssl and the Frontpage
> > > extensions module from RTR (http://www.rtr.com).
> > >
> > > 	Can FreeBSD run a 32-bit module (mod_frontpage) and a
> > > 64-bit web server reliably? This server will be in a production
> > > environment so I'd like to be sure. Thanks for any help.
>
> Brooks Davis said:
> > That's not possible.  The ABI of the module (a dynamic
> > library) and the web server are not the same so the module
> > can't be loaded (linked).
>
> It should be possible, if you're willing to maintain an i386 binary
> environment for apache and its modules?  I do not know if that would be
> easier to do on the same amd64 machine, or on a separate i386 freebsd box,
> but it seems within the realm of possibility given amd64 freebsd's ability
> to run i386 freebsd binaries.

The poster explicitly asked about running a 64-bit apache and a 32-bit 
mod_frontpage.  That combination is pretty much not possible.  You could 
possibly try a hack by creating a 64-bit mod_frontpage_wrapper that used IPC 
to talk to another 32-bit process running mod_frontpage in some kind of 
32-bit apache env that you'd have to build, but that'd be a lot of work and a 
major PITA.

-- 
John Baldwin <jhb at FreeBSD.org>  <><  http://www.FreeBSD.org/~jhb/
"Power Users Use the Power to Serve"  =  http://www.FreeBSD.org