®
As of February 5, 2003 IRIX 6.5.19 is releasing with all new MIPS systems shipping from SGI worldwide manufacturing centers.
The IRIX 6.5.19 release contains updates for both the maintenance (6.5.19m) and feature (6.5.19f) streams. This release continues the focus on stability, reliability, security and compatibility required in the IRIX 6.5.X quarterly release process.
Approximately 82 customer reported incidents are fixed in this release. In addition to bug fixes, the IRIX 6.5.19 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 6.5.19 feature path.
New Hardware Platform
SGI Origin 3900 server - Support for the SGI Origin 3900 server is included in 6.5.19. This includes support for the following features:
- New compute brick introduction to the NUMAflex architecture, providing
- A 4x-density improvement in the SGI Origin 3000 product family
- Up to 128 CPUs and 256GB per compute rack
- SGI NUMAflex shared-memory architecture
- New Enhanced Topology for the NUMAflex architecture
- SGI IRGO HPC workflow optimization feature
IRIX 6.5.19 Feature Stream Enhancements
Filesystems
CXFS upgrades:
- A new rolling annual upgrade policy permits you to upgrade from 6.5.n to the n+1 or n+4 release. This policy is effective with 6.5.18f.
- The time required to update and propagate the database across nodes in the cluster has been significantly decreased.
- If you use I/O fencing and ipfilterd(1M) on a node, the ipfilterd configuration must allow communication between the node and the telnet(1) port on the switch.
- The CXFS Manager graphical user interface (GUI) has added a new icon to represent client-only nodes.
- Application programmers should be aware that XFS recently relaxed the requirement that direct I/O be aligned along filesystem block boundaries. As of IRIX 6.5.19f, direct I/O will also be accepted using 512-byte alignment. This change makes the use of direct I/O on a CXFS partition more consistent with that of other vendors requirements and thus makes the use of CXFS more transparent.
IRIX 6.5.19 Maintenance and Feature Stream Enhancements
Special Files
Pseudo Random Number Generator
IRIX 6.5.19 provides a Pseudo Random Number Generator, accessible through the special files /dev/random, and /dev/urandom. These files support the standard file interface operations.
Software Timers
Easier access to raw real-time clock
The rdrtc() function was added to libc. This function provides a simplified interface to read the system's raw real-time clock value.
Security
OpenSSH version 3.4p1 added
Real-Time Features
Processors can no longer be unisolated while still non-preemptive
Networking
Support for Internet Protocol Version 6 (IPv6)
Internet Protocol Version 6 (IPv6) is the next generation Internet protocol, designed eventually to replace the current IPv4. IPv6 is expected to grow in usage gradually over many years and will coexist and interoperate with IPv4 for the foreseeable future.
IPv4 uses a 32-bit address scheme to represent a unique Internet address while IPv6 uses a 128-bit addressing scheme. Because IPv6 has four times the number of bits to represent addresses, it provides several billion times the address space of IPv4 and adds an almost unlimited number of available IP addresses. This resolves a projected future shortage of IPv4 addresses as more and more devices are added to the Internet.
For more information, see the IRIX Network Programming Guide and see Chapter 2, "Planning a Network" in IRIX Admin: Networking and Mail.
New gigabit ethernet driver
The new gigabit ethernet driver (device tgx) now dynamically adjusts the cards parameters to maintain good performance across very dynamic workloads.
Digital Media Environment
64-bit versions of dmedia libraries added
This release includes 64-bit versions of libaudiofile and libcdaudio.
General Administration
Support for sendmail version 8.12.5
This release supports sendmail version 8.12.5, which provides the following features:
- Simple Mail Transfer Protocol (SMTP)
- Performance improvements including multiple queues, memory-buffered pseudo-files, and more control over resolver timeouts.
- Support for "message submission agent".
- Changes to support running sendmail with group-id privileges.
- For security reasons, sendmail is no longer implemented as a
- setuid-root program.
- Ability to connect to servers running on named sockets.
- Changes to support IPv6.
- Improved support for virtual hosting.
- Improved anti-spam control features.
- Several new map classes, including ph, arith, and macro.
For more information on sendmail, see Chapter 9, "IRIX sendmail" in IRIX Admin: Networking and Mail.
SGI Software Product Life Cycle Management
IRIX support policy
In accordance with the SGI software product life cycle management strategy announced in November 2000, SGI will announce support mode changes for various software products on a quarterly basis. To view customer letters containing support mode changes announced since November 2000, as well as the latest IRIX Support Policy documents, visit the IRIX Support Policy Web page located at:
http://support.sgi.com/irix/6.5/
Applications CD
The following products were added to the IRIX Applications CD
- GNU Software configured & precompiled for IRIX, 1.1
- InSight Base 5.2
- Macromedia's Flash5 plugin 1.0
- Mozilla 1.0.1
The following products contain enhancements or new features:
- Access for Movement-Impaired Users 1.1.4
- Adobe Acrobat Reader 4.05a
- Cosmo Player VRML Viewer 2.1.6 for IRIX 6.5
- GLOBEtrotter FLEXlm License Tools 3.4.8
- Information Searching Execution Environment , 6.5.19m
- InSight 5.2, InSight Dev 5.2, and InSight Glossary
- NEdit 5.3
- Netscape Communicator, Navigator, and Dev 4.8
- Outbox Personal Web Site 1.8
- SCSL 1.4.1.1
- SGImeeting 2.0.4
- SGI WebServer Based on Apache 1.3.27
- Fulltest Indexing and Search Environment 4.2
- WebSetup 3.4
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/library/tpl/cgi-bin/getdoc.cgi/0650/bks/SGI_Developer/books/mandate_IRIX/sgi_html/pr01.html
Caveats to Read Before You Upgrade
Users are reminded to review the special "Caveats to Read Before You Upgrade" section of the online Welcome document. Visit the "Caveat and Release Note Updates" link at: http://support.sgi.com/irix/6.5/ for any late-breaking information. For IRIX 6.5.19, customers are encouraged to take advantage of the two patches prepared for this release and described in the online caveats.
IRIX 6.5.X Lookahead
IRIX 6.5.20 is in development and is planned to release mid-May, 2003
