Some Relocations Required (not for the faint of heart)

[aw27]

You can have a look at the NASM source to see how to insert the .got section in the elf. Then how to access it.
Looks easy, said this way, doesn't it? 

[johnsa]

Indeed :) Honestly I don't think it would be that complex a thing to do.. I just want to make sure I understand it 100% before trying, mainly to know if we can fully automate it and avoid all those horrible operators like WRT and GOTPCREL .. that just make asm code look really ugly.

[Gunther]

Hi John,

please excuse the break. But at the university is exam time and I have a lot to do.

John, what I'm writing now has nothing to do with you and is definitely not against you. These are just general considerations.

There are people who can not read or read properly. It's interesting that these people also cheat on certain timings and believe that nobody notices. That only incidentally.

In my first post of this thread I have written clearly and distinctly about the different Linux versions. In Ubuntu 16, this is not a problem at all. There you can always dynamically link the assembly language code against libc or libm. The created applications run even under newer distributions. But on Ubuntu 17, for example, you can not build programs from sources anymore.

Of course, there is usually a way to somehow manage something like that. An easy example: The PowerBASIC inline assembler does not support all instructions - Hutch can confirm that. Now it is easy to write the missing instructions via DB into the source code. This is called a workaround. But the fundamental problem (missing instructions) is still far from being solved. The current situation is quite comparable. With UASM we currently have no way to cleanly access the GOT or PLT, except through a workaround. That certainly works, but does not solve the fundamental problem. That was my reasoning from the beginning, but you know that yourself.

But there are, as I said, people who do not understand or want to understand. Instead, they blow up trivialities, so they are penny wise and pound foolish. This problem is not new. St. Matthew already reports about it: "Ye blind guides, which strain at a gnat, and swallow a camel." (Matthew 23, 24) Therefore, years ago I decided to ignore such people, but ignoring is already too much. You can not choose your own family and relatives. That's where you're born. But the friends and acquaintances, with whom one has dealings, one can choose. This is a privilege that I use. That's why I've been posting for years no longer in threads of self-advocates and know-it-alls. Unfortunately I have to endure that such people post into my threads and spread their balderdash there. But sometimes I wonder if some long-standing members are not visiting the forum because of such smart alecks.

John, we both have always respected each other. This will remain so. Therefore, we should look for a way to discuss the technical aspects. Maybe over PM? This thread is inappropriate for this purpose in my opinion. I can not and do not want to discuss or even work together with certain people.

At the weekend, I'm going to install the latest BSD on a machine to see how the situation is there. I will inform you then with PM about the result. To start a new thread is not worth it in my eyes. On the one hand there is not much interest in BSD in the forum, on the other hand it would not be good to give certain smarties reasons to get started. I think you understand that.

Gunther

[aw27]

To be sincere I don't give a damn to some persons, if they sound fake I simply tell it.
I know the kind that goes to online forum to make politics, show familiarity with most, treat them by the first name and pat on their shoulders.

I am not talking specifically about the person that produces graphics code for CERN, that was blindly contracted for 120,000 euro per annum to produce PowerPoint Addins, that has FIDE Masters 2300 ELO Chess rating, that tutored a major hacker mentioned on the Wikipedia, that is PHd at some Deutsch Universtat and God knows what else.

What I have seen so far is the code that such person releases, of very poor quality and usually buggy. This is not from now, I have checked also from a few years ago. If it is bad I tell it. If the person shows ignorance I tell it.

[hutch--]

Guys,

Can I ask this favour of all involved, we all differ here and there on code, ideas and methods but there is too much talent here to waste the effort of anyone. RE: The differences between people, I have a simple system to deal with this, if anyone disagrees with me I just feel sorry for them but if they make sense I will at least listen to them.  :P

As far as the Unix stuff that is being addressed here, I have a double bias, I will only run a web site on a Unix box (of whatever flavour) and I see the better end of Unix versions as far better web servers with the LAMP setup than either Windows or MAC network systems but I lament just how bad the documentation is, the age of some of the interfaces (privileges set in OCTAL) etc and reference material spread around the internet like a mad woman's sewerage. You can find you way around MS-DOS easier than a Unix system and you are free from that PHUKING "sudo" (pseudo).

With Windows code I can still run my 1995 32 bit software where Unix version (Linux distros) you often have to re-compile your "sauce" for each version. The problem will be that as soon as anyone settles on a mechanism to address certain types of hack attempts, someone else will break it. Making a non accessible colonel (kernel) is probably the only way to make a machine really hard to hack. Randomising the stack address is one way that helped and the ever irritating DEP in Windows made me a mountain of work to fix it. The old Microsoft "interconnectivity" was like people sleeping around and catching socially transferrable diseases and it worked to the same rule, the more you spread it around, the more you catch.

If the only way to update a machine was with a bootable CD/DVD then there would be no way to access the OS code at all.

[Gunther]

Steve,

you see yourself.

Envy and blind rage are always bad guides. There remains only the question: Have some people foaming at the mouth before writing or until they have written? I really can not answer that.

If, like me, you were not in the forum for a while, you realize that the whole atmosphere has changed. I've already written about longtime members that we've probably lost forever. For example, I'm thinking of Bill Cravener, Antariy or Clive. These were all good people that I miss very much. These are excellent programmers who know a lot, but have not boasted. Clive is still very active, but in the Google groups and not in our forum anymore. Antariy just had enough of the pomposity and pretension. From Bill, I know exactly what happened. That had nothing to do with you, Steve. I can gladly forward you Bill's mail.

Of course nobody will post in this forum forever and nobody should waste his precious life with endless, unfruitful debates. Dixi et salvavi animam meam (Ezekiel 3,19).

Gunther

[jj2007]

If, like me, you were not in the forum for a while, you realize that the whole atmosphere has changed. I've already written about longtime members that we've probably lost forever. For example, I'm thinking of Bill Cravener, Antariy or Clive.

Right. Add MichaelW (Last Active: October 08, 2017), DednDave, rrr314159, adeyblue, ... there are 559 members right now, most are inactive.

But I don't think that the atmosphere has dramatically deteriorated. There were always moments of tension, and occasionally we kicked out somebody who indulged too much in personal insults. Compared to some other forums I know, this is a civilised place, and in general we respect each other even if we don't speak the same language. Fake Italians can communicate with Real Norwegians :t

[aw27]

Looking at the contributors list for JWASM 2.11 I don't see the name of some people that are so regrettably missed or people that only come here for politics and gossip.
Incidentally, I am on the list although not a member of the forum at the time.


    8. Contributors

    These people contributed to JWasm ( additions, bugfixes, bug reports):

    agner, BlackVortex, dosfan01, drizz, Paul Edwards, filofel, Peter Flass,
    James C. Fuller, gfalen, habran, Japheth, Jimg, jj2007, John Hankinson,
    Khusraw, Alex Kozlov, Peter Kuznetsov, misca, Michal Necasek, H. Nidudsson,
    Nikitakita, Jose Pascoa, Terry Philips, qWord, RotateRight, Ito Toshimitsu,
    Vortex.

    Japheth

[hutch--]

I have funded this forum since about 2003 after the script kiddies that took over the old win32asm forum tried to take over the masm32 project as well but landed flat on their arse. In part it because I still enjoy writing assembler code and interacting with many other very good assembler language programmers. I worked with some excellent programmers from 1997 up to about 2003 extending the project but as various people faded away for a variety of reasons, Iczelion got married, others left for other reasons, work, life, family etc ... I took on the workload of maintaining the project and improving it over time.

I was always happy to share the stuff I bothered to write but over time this ceased to be reciprocated and by the time I did the last update on the masm32 SDK, the workload to get that all done left me brain dead and losing interest. I got no assistance at all even in testing bits of it and after I released it I heard some whining about bits and pieces that a few did not like. I have tended to take the approach that if someone wants something, they can get off their arse and write it themselves because the world where the masm32 project was started no longer exists.

I make no apology for having worked in Microsoft software since I started back in about 1990 but I have got really tired of morons attacking me because of it. After being attacked by an army of bludgers who though they could steal copyright content and give it to the GNU organisation and when they failed they tried to attack the old 1997 licence to use a number on Microsoft binaries. My response since then is to give them nothing as the project is protected by copyright to ensure it did not end up as a pile of sh*t dumped somewhere that no-one cared about.

Then there was my foolish attempt to support Japheth with his assembler but got knifed every time I tried to support it. I had a dedicated subforum for JWASM but without notice Japheth moved to Sourceforge and abandoned it so I deleted the entire subforum. I started this forum long ago to originally support people who wanted to write Microsoft assembler and over time I have tried to support people who were developing their own. I have supported John as he is a hard worker doing good work but much of the rest contribute nothing and just suck the life out of anything they can find.

Closed source systems vying for dominance over other tools and systems has been a genuine pest and among other things it is the reason why the LAB has died some years ago. Where once you saw excellent code from various contributors, over the years all you got if you bothered to post algorithms was closed source binaries with no explanation or source code using the LAB as advertising.

Something that has really pissed me off is the amount of criticism because I choose to write 64 bit MASM code. After waiting years for Japheth to get off his arse and not seeing a 64 bit version that would be finished in my lifetime, I found Vasily's work and after rewriting some massive amount of it I have ended up with a more or less viable 64 bit system and to be blunt, I don't give a flying PHUK who does not like it. I fought the assembler wars long ago against a pile of bludgers so I am reasonably well practised at it and I will never kiss the arse of Open Sauce as I have been shit on too many times.

I do have a solution to the endless attacks, I am still more or less a human being and object to being treated like an internet object so if it pisses me off enough, its easy to pull the plug on the whole forum and spend the money on a yearly trip or a couple of new cameras or whatever else I feel like.

[johnsa]

Speaking of Japheth (note subtle subject change)... ;)

Does anyone know what actually happened to the guy ? He fell off the face of the earth, I can only assume something unfortunate..

[aw27]

Speaking of Japheth (note subtle subject change)... ;)

Does anyone know what actually happened to the guy ? He fell off the face of the earth, I can only assume something unfortunate..

He ("My real-life name is Andreas Grech, living in the vicinity of Stuttgart, Germany") had a website, let me see if I remember... ahhh! got it: www.Japheth.de 
The website is still reported by whois.com but has no pages since Sept 2014 (web.archive.org).

[johnsa]

Very strange.. oh well.. no matter :)

[Gunther]

John,

Very strange.. oh well.. no matter :)

Yes, indeed. But I think it's time for a clear word now.

If someone writes and in the end assumes that only people who have participated in the development of JWASM/UASM seriously work in the forum, this only shows his great ignorance and arrogance, as well as his very limited thinking. I can name on the spot a long series of forum members who were not involved in the development of JWASM/UASM, but still made excellent contributions in other areas: Hutch with several MASM projects, Jochen with his development of MASM BASIC, Bogdan with the development of SOL ASM and SOL OS, Edgar, rsala, Vortex, Mikl__, Raistlin, FORTRANS,  Raymond and, and, and ... I could continue this list for a long time.

That should be all people who do not work seriously and only those interested in politics and gossip? Is that really true?

I'm seriously asking: How long do the many seriously working members want to let this impudence and blatancy go? Exactly that, Jochen, I meant with atmospheric change. You must have noticed that too.

Gunther

[aw27]

Very strange.. oh well.. no matter :)

Yeap, he has the right to disappear without leaving any trace.  :icon_cool:
BTW, I have nothing against Germans, some of them are nice people (not all!  . Prost to the nice ones.  :icon14:)

[GoneFishing]

Very interesting  ;)
Maybe he still has H2INCX source code?