IRIX® 6.5.13 Release

As of August 8, 2001 IRIX 6.5.13 is releasing with all new systems shipping from SGI worldwide manufacturing centers.

The IRIX 6.5.13 release contains updates for both the maintenance (6.5.13m) and feature (6.5.13f) streams. This release continues the focus on stability, reliability and compatibility required in the IRIX 6.5.X quarterly release process.

Approximately 133 customer reported incidents are fixed in this release. In addition to bug fixes, the IRIX 6.5.13 maintenance path delivers several software enhancements and additional installation improvements. Since a major goal of the IRIX 6.5.X release process is to provide a feature stream as stable as the maintenance stream, the same bug fixes and software enhancements are also applied to the IRIX 6.5.13 feature path.

The general distribution process is through the online ordering system. IRIX 6.5.13m and 6.5.13f images are also available for download off Supportfolio.

Summary of Software Enhancements delivered by IRIX 6.5.13

Maintenance and Feature Stream:

Filesystems

  • Improved exit codes for the xfsrestore and xfsdump commands.
  • Changed the mkfs command to allow you to specify the size of an XFS allocation group, as an alternative to specifying the total number of allocation groups.
  • Changed the mkfs command to allow you to specify the size of a stripe unit and the size of a stripe width in bytes or in filesystem blocks, as an alternative to specifying these values in 512-byte block units.
  • Changed the default size of an XFS allocation group; larger filesystems will result in larger default allocation group sizes.
  • The xfsdump and xfsrestore commands will provide the VSN of the tape that reached its end-of-volume (or the VSN of a new tape that needs to be mounted) and pass this VSN to the media_change_alert_program specified with the -c option.
  • Changed the default size of an XFS log. The default log size grows with the size of the filesystem up to the maximum log size, 128 megabytes, on a 1 terabyte filesystem.

Scalability

  • Added cpusetAttachPID() and cpusetDetachPID() functions to the Cpuset System library. These functions allow a programmer to attach/detach a currently running program to an existing cpuset.

Networking

  • The following features have been moved from Enhanced DHCP to standard DHCP:
    • Ping check before an address is leased to insure it is not already in use.
    • MAC address filtering.
  • Added implementation of End Sequence to Scheduled Transfer Protocol.

Graphics workstations

  • VPro for Octane/OpenGL performance improvements have been added as follows:
    • Improved X window performance by 25 percent based on x11perf.
    • Iproved performance of OpenGL glCopypixel() function.

SGI Origin 3000 servers

  • The following new system controller features have been implemented for the SGI Origin 3000 server series:
    • Enabled router port security.
    • Enabled system serial number security.
    • Redesigned the graphical interface for the front-panel display of the SGI 3400 and 3800 servers. Added hotplug attach feature that allows Gigabit Ethernet cards to be installed on a running system.
    • Added Origin 3000 system partitioning support in the eoe.sw.partition software package.

System performance

  • Efficiency improvements have been made to the BTE driver layer to reduce both latency and contention.
  • The tools that report CPU utilization have been modified to correct the sampling of %WIO to omit idle time in line with industry standards.

Licensing software

  • Updated FLEXlm v7.2f support from GLOBEtrotter Software, Inc. The license manager daemon and the floating license server are built in V5 compatibility mode. For backwards compatibility, the client libraries and header files are still based on FLEXlm v6.1g.
Feature Stream:

Filesystems

  • The structure of the CXFS filesystem configuration has been changed. CXFS filesystems can now be defined, modified, managed and deleted independently of each other, and of the cluster definition.
  • The XVM Volume Manager can be used when layered with the CXFS filesystem. The XVM Volume Manager can also be used as a standalone volume manager; this requires that you be running (6.5.13f) feature stream. The (6.5.13m) maintenance stream does not support XVM as a standalone volume manager; this support is planned for a later release.
  • Added support for the use of mirrors in XVM logical volumes. The mirroring feature of XVM requires the XFS Volume Plexing software option. Customers running CXFS and who want to run mirrors will need to purchase this license. XLV customers with plexing licenses can upgrade to XVM without having to acquire a new license.
Applications CD:
  • The following products were updated with bug fixes only:
    • SGI Web Server, based on the Apache 1.3.20
    • IRIX Interactive Desktop System Administration
    • Information Searching Execution Environment
    • InSight Online Doc Viewer 4.4
    • Netscape Communicator 4.77
      By default, version 4.77 will install the new N32 version of the browser. Any existing third-party plugins for the browser that are O32 will no longer function. Support for the Macromedia Flash plugin is also included.

  • The following products contain enhancements or new features:
    • WebSetup 3.3 has been updated to support the SGI web server based on Apache 1.3.20 and an administration GUI has been added.
    • Impressario 2.9.5 to support a new HP6300 Scanner driver and an Epson PPD bug fix.
    (For more information on support modes, see the Support Policy page at http://www.support.sgi.com/news/support/index.html#support_policy)

IRIX 6.5 Application Compatibility Mandate

For those providers asking about quarterly recertification of applications, please take a moment and become acquainted with the application compatibility protections offered by IRIX 6.5. This is a very powerful mandate that allows an application to be developed under IRIX 6.5.X and be run on any IRIX 6.5.Y, regardless of whether Y > X, Y == X, or Y < x.

The Mandate of Application Compatibility in SGI IRIX 6.5 is at URL: http://techpubs.sgi.com/tpl.cgi/view/SGI_Developer/mandate_IRIX

Caveats to Read Before You Upgrade

Users are reminded to review the special "Caveats to Read Before You Upgrade" section of the online Start Here document. Visit the the "Caveat and Release Note Updates" link at: http://support.sgi.com/6.5/caveat_updates.html for any late-breaking information.

IRIX 6.5.X Lookahead

IRIX 6.5.14 is in development and is planned to release mid-November, 2001

  • Planned default change in IRIX 6.5.14
In the IRIX 6.5.5 release, SGI introduced a new optional directory format for XFS filesystems, referred to as the "version 2" directory format in mkfs output.

XFS filesystems with a version 2 directory format can provide improved reliability and performance over filesystems with a version 1 directory format in some applications, particularly for applications that use NFS exported XFS filesystems.

The directory format for an XFS filesystem is specified with the -n parameter of the mkfs command. The default directory format is currently the original version 1 directory format.

Beginning with the IRIX 6.5.14 release, version 2 directories of XFS will be the default for all new filesystems created with mkfs. Version 1 directory filesystem creation will still be supported, but this will require that you specify the -n version=1 parameter of the mkfs command.

SGI recommends that all new XFS filesystems be created with version 2 directories. IRIX releases older than IRIX 6.5.5, however, will not be able to mount a filesystem created with a version 2 directory and will issue the following message when a mount is attempted: 

Wrong filesystem type: xfs
Many SGI customers are currently running production servers with version 2 directories. Should you wish to format filesystems with the version 2 directory format prior to the 6.5.14 release you can specify the following option of mkfs: 
mkfs -n version=2
There is no means for converting a filesystem, in place, between version 1 and version 2 directories. A filesystem can be converted between version 1 and version 2 directories by means of an xfsdump/mkfs/xfsrestore sequence.