Mandatory to upgrade to 7.0 for linux kernel 2.6.16?

[Sven Stauss]

Dear all

I have a question concerning linux compatibility, in particular the  
kernel version. In order to upgrade the linux kernel to 2.6.16, is it  
absolutely required  to change the system to FreeBSD-CURRENT as  
mentioned in some messages posted here or is it in principle also  
possible to keep the system in a version which is not bleeding edge  
(e.g. FreeBSD -STABLE or -RELEASE) and only update the linux port to  
current? Has anybody tried this?

The reason is that I am trying to install and run a commercial  
engineering suite (CFD-ACE+, 32bit version) on a FreeBSD server (Dual  
Opteron, the system is FreeBSD amd64 release 6.2). I followed the  
guidelines in the FreeBSD handbook to enable Linux compatibility. But  
when I try to start the programs, I get a core dump (running some  
programs under truss permits to get at least the splash screen, for  
the others I don't even get this ...).
I also asked the local representative of the company whether it would  
be possible to make a FreeBSD version, but so far I have had no  
response.

Officially, CFD-ACE+ is supported to run under Red Hat Enterprise 4  
(which is based on Linux kernel 2.6 and later, I think). So my guess  
is that the problem is due to the difference/absence of certain  
system calls in 2.4.2 with respect to 2.6.16.

However, because I am rather new to FreeBSD and not experienced in  
debugging operating systems, I'd like (if possible) to stay with the  
present installation of FreeBSD and upgrade to 7.0 only if there's no  
other solution in order use the 2.6.16 linux base. Or is 7.0 already  
stable enough so that it could used in a production environment?

Many thanks in advance for any help and suggestions,


sven.



P.S . Running the programs under truss I typically get the following  
output:

truss: execution type Linux ELF32 is not supported -- using FreeBSD  
ELF64: Unknown error: 0
truss: execution type Linux ELF32 is not supported -- using FreeBSD  
ELF64: Invalid argument
ktrace(0x1)					 = 146112512 (0x8b58000)
settimeofday(0x0)				 = 0 (0x0)
access("",680748704)				 ERR#-2 'Unknown error: -2'
open("",O_RDWR,00)				 ERR#-2 'Unknown error: -2'
open("",O_RDWR,00)				 ERR#-2 'Unknown error: -2'
open("",O_SHLOCK|O_FSYNC|O_EXCL|O_DIRECT|0x28926000,01) = 3 (0x3)
mmap(0x2,3,PROT_EXEC| 
0x28935fc0,0x0,4996820062306259536,0x3339383278307c43) = 0 (0x0)
dup2(0x28936628)				 = 680751104 (0x28937000)
close(680751104)				 = 0 (0x0)
...