IRIX® 6.5.9 Release

As of August 9th, IRIX 6.5.9 is releasing with all new systems shipping from SGI worldwide manufacturing centers.

The IRIX 6.5.9 release contains updates for both the maintenance (6.5.9m) and feature (6.5.9f) streams.

The general distribution process is through the online ordering system. IRIX 6.5.9m and 6.5.9f images are also available for download off Supportfolio.

The IRIX 6.5.9 maintenance path delivers approximately 110 bug fixes that were customer reported. In addition to the bug fixes, the IRIX 6.5.9 maintenance path delivers several software enhancements and additional installation improvements. These changes are also available in the IRIX 6.5.9 feature path.

New Hardware support in IRIX 6.5.9

  • Support for the SGI™ Origin® 3000 server series, including the SGI™ Origin® 3200, SGI™ Origin® 3400, and SGI™ Origin® 3800 servers. The SGI™ Origin® 3000 series servers are distributed shared memory (DSM) systems that scale from 2 to 512 processors. In a DSM system, each compute node (2 or 4 processors) has local memory that it shares with the other compute nodes in the system.

  • The SGI 3000 series servers are based on SGI™ NUMA (formerly ccNUMA), a cache-coherent non-uniform memory access architecture, which ensures that the caches of the processors contain valid data. For example, if a processor alters the data in a cache location and another processor has a copy of that data in its cache, the processor that holds the copy will be notified that the memory location no longer contains valid data. SGI NUMA architecture also supports varied access times for local and remote memory references.

  • Support for the TVO digital video option board for Silicon Graphics® Onyx2® systems.

Software Enhancements delivered by IRIX 6.5.9m

  • Support for Embedded Support Partner 2.0 (ESP2.0). This release supercedes patch 3895 and includes the major features as follows:
    • Automatic Call Logging to the SGI call centers for Mission Critical Supported customers
    • Support of event profiles for monitoring
    • A new command line interface to setup and use ESP
    • A new user interface with a high level of usability and navigational features
    • Fixes to the System Group Manager for secure interconnectivity between group members and the group manager
    • Support for an unlimited number of group members to the System Group Manager
    • Multiple ESP user support with page privileges
    • ESP logbook for electronically logging and tracking support activities locally on the system

    The migration from ESP1.0 to ESP2.0 is done seamlessly when upgrading from previous versions of IRIX to IRIX 6.5.9

  • Support for the SCSI Enclosure Services (SES). A new subsystem that manages the Fibre Channel drive enclosures has been added. The new daemon, sesdaemon, supports the Xyratex 12-slot enclosure and the Clariion 10-slot enclosure. The new client application, sesmgr, uses a command set similar to the set used by the previous fcagent/fccli subsystem.

Software Enhancements Delivered by IRIX 6.5.9f

IRIX 6.5.9f contains all enhancements delivered in 6.5.9m

  • Support for the Scheduled Transfer Protocol (STP). STP is a lightweight network protocol that is compliant with the ANSI Standard Revision 3.1 protocol suite that is designed to support extremely high performance data movement. STP uses Direct Memory Access (DMA) to read and write data into user space from a network interface. This lets high bandwidth devices based on Gigabyte System NetworkTM (GSN) perform at network speeds with minimum interrupt overhead. For more information, see the GSN main page or http://www.hippi.org. In 6.5.6, STP was initially added to the IRIX feature stream with minimal functionality.

  • Support for disk quotas that can now be set by project ID. Disk quotas let you limit the amount of space a user or project can occupy and the number of files (inodes) that each user or project can own. You can implement hard or soft limits; hard limits are enforced by the system and soft limits only remind the user to decrease disk usage.

  • Support for the waitjob feature, which includes the new functions setwaitjobpid() and waitjob(). These functions let the batch schedulers query job information following job termination. When a batch scheduler launches a job, it calls setwaitjobpid() to tell the new job what pid is waiting for information upon termination. When the job terminates, it remains as a zombie until either the batch scheduler calls waitjob() to retrieve the job's termination information or the waiting pid no longer exists. The information returned includes the job start time, usage information, and reason for termination.
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 6.5.10 is in development and is tentatively planned to release mid-November, 2000.

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