New HP 9000 running a 32-Bit O/S

[John Waller]

We are in a interesting position.

We currently develop an application on a D260 running HP-UX 11.00 32-bit. This is now 3 years old so to reduce support cost the company is looking to replace it with a new server.

The problem is using the SalesBuilder/QuoteBuilder software it appears you cannot buy a new server which will run HP-UX 11.00 32-bit only HP-UX 11.00 64-bit minimum. As we have customers who run on D class , and even F and E class machines, I don't believe we can move to a 64-bit for development purposes and still write software for the older systems.

Are my presumptions correct and does anybody know of a solution. Any ideas / offers grately aprreciated.

[Sanjay_6]

Hi John,

You can go for a system which supports both 32 as well as 64 Bit OS. Load 32 bit on the box and the other development tools you use. Ans it should work the same way as your old D-class with some more muscle power, of course.

hope this helps.

thanks

[Sanjay_6]

Hi John,

forgot to mention, during compilation keep an eye on the processor your are compiling the application for. I think any application compiled on a old system will work on a new system, but one compiled on a new system may give problem on an old system. Sort of downward compatibility thing. However most of the compilation programs will have switches / options to overcome something like that.

hope this help you a little more

thanks

[Santosh Nair_1]

John,

Unless you're building 64-bit applications (and very few ppl are), it shouldn't matter whether your running a 64-bit OS or a 32-bit OS. In fact, if you read though the release notes (/usr/share/doc/11.00ReleaseNotes), the 64-bit OS can run both 64-bit and 32-bit apps.

The developers here build their software on a N-class machine, which can only run HPUX 11/64-bit but they build 32-bit apps and their apps run on both 64-bit or 32-bit OS.

I'd say get the best machine that you can buy...the L-class look really nice and they're pretty powerful.

Hope this helps.

-Santosh

[Michael Tully]

Hi,

I have not seen a 32 bit application that doesn't run on 64 bit, in saying that there coule be problems occuring if you are using a RDBMS that is specifically for 64 bit.

HTH
-Michael

[A. Clay Stephenson · Accepted solution]

Hi John:

I suggest that you buy either and L or an N box
and configure them for 64-bit. You simply need to compile with the +DAportable and +DD32 flags and all should be well. I would keep your old box without maintenance (or hardware only) and use it as a 32-bit testbed. The one big gotcha in generating 32-bit code is shared memory segments which might have been created by 64 bit processes - maybe by a third party vendor (database or other daemon). You can still talk to these segments but your programmers need to read the shmop,shmctl, and shmget man pages very carefully. Basically, whoever creates these segments needs to assert the IPC_SHARE32 flag.

64-bit executables will not run any faster and the only reason to generate 64-bit code is resource limits.

[John Waller]

Many thanks for the replies, I do know that you can run a 32-Bit application on a 64-Bit box as we are doing this at the moment with the newer customers. My question was regarding running a application which was developed on a 64-Bit machine on a older 32-Bit system. I think compiling with the extra flags will probably help, but HP please note, I don't feel its fair to push people down the 64-Bit route, when as a software developer, we do have customers who can't afford to upgrade to the later machines.