Hi, I have a problem I can't figure out. I compiled a custom kernel for Slackware 13.37, and am having a problem with some legacy software.

Background:
The software is written in Borland's Object Pascal of yesteryear, Kylix 3. Now I don't want this to be a "you shouldn't use such unsupported software", because I know that. This is a legacy software compatibility question, not a request for help deciding on a new language/IDE - that has already been decided, we just need to support this software for now.

Problem:
The problem is that on this kernel and this kernel alone (3.10.17-smp), we seem to be unable to increment any numeric value. Whether it's a double, float or even int, trying to increment the value ends up with an access violation. I've put the program through valgrind extensively, and come to the conclusion that Borland's Kylix compiler is based on GCC 2.9.6 or similar (it shares many of the same bugs). The issue also seems to cause a huge memory cache leak that can eat up over a GB every hour, and is not fixable by echoing 3 to /proc/sys/vm/drop_caches.

I'm in the process of recompiling the kernel with 486 processor compatibility, so I rule out any processor specific issues, but does anybody have any ideas what could cause this? It's taken days to track down what the problem is, and any help is hugely appreciated.

Thanks in advance!

So your program works with a "stock" 3.10.17 kernel (the default kernel for Slackware 14.1) but not with the custom kernel?

Seems to me that Slackware kernels do support 486 by default (or at least they did, I haven't fiddled with the kernel for quite a while).

I think I'd just use the stock kernel and be done with it as long as your application works; otherwise, I'd get the config file from the distribution media (look at http://ftp.osuosl.org/pub/slackware/...ernels/huge.s/ if you don't have the CD-ROM/DVD). The file is named "config" (no leading dot) and it is the configuration file for building the release huge kernel. If you copy that to where you're building the kernel, save it as .config, type make and wait a while, you can build a working kernel from scratch. Keep editing and building until you break it then back up one step.

Have you given any thought to using a modern Pascal compiler? You might have to do some editing of the source but maybe that would be worth a try (and a lot less effort than fiddling with the kernel)? There are all kinds of free Pascal compilers for Linux out there that might be worth a look (maybe there's one that supports the Pascal of Olde, eh?

Hope this helps some.

Is this on an actual multi-core box?