Q: Patching Binaries under AIX 1.1

[Eric Mowat]

In article <6693 at columbia.edu>, ji at close.cs.columbia.edu (John Ioannidis) writes:
> Does anyone have adb for AIX 1.1? I need to be able to patch things in
> the running kernel, and also patch the unix executable, and the only
> thing I know that can do both is adb (superzap was never ported to the
> Unix world :-) ). Why oh why did the powers-that-be remove adb from the
> distribution? 
> 

Adb was removed from AIX 1.1 because the only version Locus had contained
AT&T code.  Fortunately there is a workaround.  Use ldminit.  It is contained
in /usr/sys/bin.  Say you want to patch the variable flpdebug in the
kernel.  Edit a file and insert the following line:

flpdebug:1:4:

and run:
ldminit -c <your config file containing flpdebug> -l /local/<name of unix>

This will set the variable flpdebug to 1.  The 4 means that the variable
is 4 bytes long.  You can also use ldminit to patch the running system
as well as the binary, provided you have permissions of course.  The -p 
option will patch /dev/kmem as well.

	Eric Mowat
	mowat at pyrshadow.pyramid.com