As of May 7, 2003 IRIX 6.5.20 is releasing with all new systems shipping from SGI worldwide manufacturing centers.

The IRIX 6.5.20 release contains both maintenance and feature updates. This release continues the focus on stability, reliability, security and compatibility required in the IRIX 6.5.X quarterly release process.

Approximately 109 customer reported incidents are fixed in this release. In addition to bug fixes, the IRIX 6.5.20 maintenance path delivers several software enhancements and additional installation improvements. Since a major goal of the IRIX 6.5 release process is to provide a feature path as stable as the maintenance path, the same bug fixes and software enhancements are applied to both paths.

The general distribution process is through the online ordering system. IRIX 6.5.20m and 6.5.20f images are also available for download off Supportfolio.

IRIX 6.5.20 Feature Stream Enhancements

Filesystems

• Changes to CXFS and XVM Manager GUIs
  • New GUI login choices, including support for a remote shell connection, which connects to the server via a user-specified command shell, such as rsh(1C) or ssh(1).
  • The ability for the root user to grant other users permission to execute specific GUI tasks.
• Changes to CXFS
  • The default values for cxfsd_min and cxfsd_max have changed to 16. The legal value for cxfsd_max has also changed to be an integer in the range 8 through 4096.

Sysadm Base GUIs

• Sysadm Base GUIs use Java2 (version 1.4.1) Sysadm Base 3.0 ports the Sysadm Base 2.0 software from Java1 (version 1.1.8) to Java2 (version 1.4.1) which is the latest Java version supported by SGI. Sysadm Base 3.0 supports SGI's IRIX software for remote cluster and storage administration. The CXFS, FailSafe, and XVM Manager GUIs depend on Sysadm Base.

• MPEG Layer 3 (MP3) audio decoding MP3 audio decoding is integrated into the digital medial libraries and all associated dmedia tools.
• Huffman YUV (HuffYUV) video codec The Huffman YUV (HuffYUV) video codec is supported, which allows lossless real-time compression of 4:2:2 video in the range of 2:1 to 3:1.
• Griffin iMic USB audio interface is supported.
• M-Audio Revolution PCI audio card is supported.

• OpenGL Shader 3.0.1 Execution Only Environment OpenGL Shader is now shipped with IRIX. OpenGL Shader is a powerful multi-platform appearance-modeling tool that provides incredible realism effects through an easy and powerful development toolkit.

• Support for Motif 2.1 and ViewKit 2.1 development has been added to the Maintenance stream.

• Kerberos bundled in IRIX Libraries and utility programs from MIT kerberos V version 1.2.7 are now part of the IRIX deliverable. The libraries included are: libcom_err.so, libdes425.so, libgssapi_krb5.so, libk5crypto.so, and libkrb5.so. The utility programs included are: kdestroy, kinit, klist, kpasswd, and kvno.
• OpenLDAP bundled in IRIX OpenLDAP version 2.1.12 with support for TLS/SSL and Kerberos authentication is now packaged with IRIX. This includes the complete suite of programs and header files necessary to implement an LDAP server and client applications.

• Write-capable UDF filesystem format Universal Disk Format (UDF) is the filesystem used on DVDs. The UDF specifications are produced by OSTA, and are based on the ECMA-167 specification. A read-only implementation of UDF was added to IRIX 6.5.18, and a write-capable version was added for IRIX 6.5.20.

• Job Limits and CSA packages added to maintenance stream The Job Limits and Comprehensive System Accounting packages, long available in the IRIX feature stream, have been added to the maintenance stream. These features are available in the optionally installable packages eoe.sw.jlimits and eoe.sw.csa.

• mod_ssl package added to sgi_apache web server The mod_ssl package has been added to the sgi_apache web servers. The mod_ssl package adds secure http (https or TLS) support to apache, using openssl to do the encryption. Note that to use secure connections you must generate a certificate for your host.

• Trusted IRIX support in CPR The IRIX 6.5.20 release adds support for Trusted IRIX attributes to checkpoint and restart processes (CPR). If enabled, capabilities, mandatory access control (MAC) labels, and access control lists (ACLs) are saved at the time of checkpoint and restored upon restart. Capabilities are saved and restored for processes and files. MAC labels are saved and restored for processes, files, pipes, named pipes, and System V shared memory segments. ACLs are saved and restored for files and named pipes.

• 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

• The following products were added to the IRIX Applications CD
  • Java2 v1.4.1 Execution Environment (Sun JRE v1.4.1)
  • Java2 v1.4.1 Development Environment (Sun JDK v1.4.1)
  • Java2 v1.4.1 Debug Binaries (Sun JDK v1.4.1)
  • Java2(tm) Runtime Plug-in for Irix, Edition 1.4.1
• The following products contain fixes and/or enhancements
  • Color Management 2.3
  • Cosmo Create Authoring Environment, 1.0.3a
  • ImageVision Tools, 3.2.2
  • Information Searching Execution Environment , 6.5.20m
  • Macrovision FLEXlm (v8.3b) License Tools 3.4.9
  • Mozilla 1.0.2
  • MPI 4.2 (MPT 1.7)
  • MPT 1.7
  • SGI Scientific Library 1.4.1.2 (SCSL 1.4.1.2)
  • SGImeeting 2.0.5
  • SGI WebServer Based on Apache 1.3.27a
  • IRIS Showcase 3.4.3a
  • SiteMgr - Web Content Administration, 1.2.1
  • SMA 4.0 (MPT 1.7)
  • Web Setup and Administration, 3.5

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 6.5.20, customers are encouraged to take advantage of the patch to xfs_repair prepared for this release and described in the online caveats.

IRIX 6.5.X Lookahead

IRIX 6.5.21 is in development and is planned to release mid-August, 2003