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…tion per activation) Boot-speed #2. The five netbsd-vax boot images (STARTUP/PROVISION/DCL/ JOB_CONTROL/LOGINOUT) were dynamic ELF32-vax activated by /usr/libexec/ld.elf_so. The in-process IMGACT bails SS$_UNSUPPORTED on the foreign interp, so every boot activation is fork+execve and ld.elf_so re-relocated libc/libpthread/libm/ libatomic from scratch (~4x/boot) -- a cost native VMS's prelinked activation never pays. Link all five -static: no PT_INTERP, no DT_NEEDED. Static-link weak-seam anchors (anti-LARP): LOGINOUT's sysuaf_lookup() and DCL's SHOW/F$IDENTIFIER reach the SYSUAF/RIGHTSLIST engines through a #pragma weak seam whose reader cells were ALREADY UND=0 in the dynamic baseline (a weak undef does not pull an archive member). Force-anchor them with the existing production anchor TUs -- src/vmslink/loginout_rms_bind.c and src/vmslink/dcl_rms_bind.c (reused, not reinvented) -- so sysuaf_rms.o/rightslist_live.o are pulled and the engines are DEFINED in each -static image. PROVISION already strong-calls the engine (survives -static). Per-image readelf proofs assert engines DEFINED (not UND) + no PT_INTERP/DT_NEEDED. The boot-images gate now asserts the static contract instead of the dynamic one. Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 4.8 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>
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Closing: the -static A/B measured a +6.44% REGRESSION (+25.2M instr, all in PROVISION), and code investigation confirms it's inherently worse on netbsd-vax, not a fixable bug — the ownership walk is link-mode-invariant, so the +24.8M is pure image-load/self-relocation cost from de-sharing the ld.elf_so-relocated libc/RTL that Decision A (design-p4-netbsd-vax-boot.md §4.5.1) shares across the dynamic boot chain. Not a boot-speed lever. Branch work/vms-0ab-v2 preserved for reference (weak-seam anchor TUs) if the global-sections endgame ever revisits static. Real levers are Fix D (PROVISION skip-already-owned) + a DCL label-offset cache — tracked in vms-af26. |
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Boot-speed fix #2 (the confirmed VAX-demo lever, per the PCjs peer's empirical profile). The netbsd-vax boot images were dynamically linked, so every fork()+execve() activation paid
ld.elf_sore-relocating libc/libpthread/libm/libatomic from scratch — a per-activation tax native VMS's prelinked activation never pays. This statically links them, deletingld.elf_sofrom every activation.What
tools/cross-vax/build-*-vax.sh(boot-images/job-control/loginout/ovmx-init/provision/vmsdcl):-staticlink the boot images (DCL/PROVISION/LOGINOUT/JOB_CONTROL/STARTUP).-staticimage can drop a#pragma weakengine → the facility silently fails (this class bit Alpha login). Addedloginout_rms_bind.o/dcl_rms_bind.oforce-anchor TUs so the SYSUAF auth engines (sysuaf_authenticate/purdy_s_hash/ovmx_sysuaf_read_user) are linked into the auth-path images.Proof (real SIMH,
readelf+ boot)readelfon all 5 elf32-vax boot images: statically linked — no PT_INTERP, no DT_NEEDED. The 3 auth engines DEFINED (not UND) in PROVISION/LOGINOUT/DCL.run-boot.sh sysboot-singleboots clean toUsername:with the -static images — no "User authorization failure" (the anti-LARP proof the weak-seam anchors held under -static), sha256 changed (real ODS-2 writes).VAX build-recipe + anchor TUs only — VAX-substrate, does NOT ride the 3-way. The size delta is ~0 on disk (larger images fit inside the fixed FFS partition); the win is boot-speed (measured by the PCjs peer's v1→v2 A/B). Branch cherry-picks cleanly onto #758 (single-disk harness).