Is it possible to run 32 bit program (IonCube) on 64 bit Solaris (SmartOS)?

Question

I am extremely new to the Solaris world however we are attempting to utilize SmartOS which is made by Joyent for the purposes of web hosting. First problem we run into almost immediately: Our client's eCommerce site uses an extension that is encoded with IonCube. IonCube currently only supports x86 and sparc.

http://www.ioncube.com/loaders.php

The extension in use cannot be substituted without a week of migration work installing an alternative. Is there any way to package or run IonCube x86 as x86-64? Thank you in advance.

Answer 1

You cannot mix 32 bit and 64 bit code. It looks like ioncube is not a program but a shared library. It then requires to be linked with a 32 bit binary.

On the other hand, a 64 bit Solaris kernel supports running either 32 or 64 bit binaries so what you might do is to make sure you use a 32 bit version of your main application, if available.