®
by Alan Karoff
As of May 22nd, IRIX 6.5.8 is releasing with all new systems shipping
from sgi worldwide manufacturing centers.
The IRIX 6.5.8 release contains updates for both the maintenance (6.5.8m)
and feature (6.5.8f) streams.
The general distribution process is the new online ordering system. An
announcement was mailed to all sgi customers. IRIX 6.5.8m and 6.5.8f
images are also available for download off Supportfolio.
The IRIX 6.5.8 maintenance path delivers approximately 125 bug fixes that
were customer reported. In addition to the bug fixes, the IRIX 6.5.8
maintenance path delivers several software enhancements and additional
installation improvements. These changes are also available in the
IRIX 6.5.8 feature path.
New Hardware support in IRIX 6.5.8
- VPro Graphics, the next generation graphics for Octane systems.
- Onyx2 InfiniteReality3 systems.
Software enhancements delivered by IRIX 6.5.8m
- Support for 32-bit direct mapping to any node on the system. This feature
lets the system administrator change the 32-bit direct mapping node for
a specific Peripheral Component Interconnect (PCI) bus. It also provides
a new interface, pcibr_get_dmatrans_node(), that lets a device driver
obtain the node ID. For more information, see the IRIX Device Driver
Programmer's Guide and the pcibr_get_dmatrans_node(D3) man page.
- Support for the cpuset programming interface (previously known as
miser_cpuset). This interface is provided in the form of a Dynamic Shared
Object (DSO). You can use this programming interface to create cpusets,
remove cpusets, and attach processes to cpusets. You can use the cpuset
programming interface in areas where the cpuset command is inappropriate.
For example, if a batch system needs to use the cpuset capability in IRIX,
the programming interface will provide a more flexible and robust solution
than the cpuset command. For more information, see IRIX Admin: Resource
Administration and the IRIX 6.5.8 StartHere document for a list of
associated man page references.
- Support for new Miser cpuset options. These options allow the creation of
restrictive memory pools from the nodes that contain the CPUs listed in the
configuration file. Processes that exceed the available memory on those
nodes may be terminated or paged (selectable). For more information on
these options, see the cpuset(4) man page.
- Support for the IRIX sendmail mail system based on sendmail version 8.8.8,
which is the version supplied on previous IRIX 6.5.x releases. Due to
customer demand, the current sendmail.org release, which is sendmail
version 8.9.3 (see http://www.sendmail.org), is supplied via patch 3937.
SGI intends to support sendmail 8.9.3 (or above) as the standard released
sendmail in a future IRIX release (tentatively planned for IRIX 6.5.9).
Software enhancements delivered by IRIX 6.5.8f
IRIX 6.5.8f contains all enhancements delivered in 6.5.8m
- Support for Comprehensive System Accounting (CSA). CSA is a set of
user and administrative C programs and shell scripts that provide
methods to collect per-process resource usage data, monitor disk usage,
and charge fees to specific login accounts. CSA uses this per-process
accounting information and combines it by job identifier within the
system boot uptime periods. CSA provides the following features that
are not available with any other IRIX accounting package:
- Per-job accounting
- Daemon accounting (tape and Network Queuing System (NQS))
- Flexible accounting periods (daily and periodic accounting
reports can be generated as often as desired and not restricted
to once per day or once per month)
- Flexible system billing units (SBUs)
- User exits for site specific customization of daily and periodic
accounting
- Configurable parameters within the /etc/csa.conf file
- User job accounting (ja command)
For more information, see IRIX Admin: Resource Administration and the
csa(1M) man page.
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 athttp://support.sgi.com/6.5/caveat_updates.html for any
late-breaking information.
IRIX 6.5.x Lookahead
IRIX 6.5.9 is in development and is tentatively planned to release
mid-August, 2000.
For more information see:
