Key New Features and Changes
The goal of the IRIX 6.5 release
family is to provide a high quality and stable operating system for all
SGI systems.
Significant
additional software has been packaged with IRIX 6.5, including some
important system and network management and interoperability tools.
This page contains a partial list of
the key new features and changes for IRIX 6.5.27.
To see the list of key features and changes for the IRIX 6.5 and IRIX
6.5.1 through 6.5.26 releases, see the previous IRIX features page.
For information about
supported hardware and peripherals in IRIX 6.5.27, see the Minimum Requirements page.
Look for information about the IRIX
6.5 release family on Supportfolio Online (http://support.sgi.com/irix/6.5)
and http://www.sgi.com.
For details on any of these
new features and changes, refer to the release notes.
Note: Some features listed here apply only for
certain software bundles or hardware configurations.
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CXFS Support
CXFS will be supported with IRIX 6.5.27 as an asynchronous product.
The CXFS release for IRIX 6.5.27 must be ordered separately.
For more information, consult your SGI service representative.
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Changes to Fonts, PostScript(TM) Viewing,
and PDF Viewing Tools
Several of the fonts were updated for the IRIX 6.5.23 release, and as a result,
customers may notice a change in some of the filenames used in the font
directories. You may also see some minor changes to the fonts' appearance
on the display. Applications that use fonts through the standard
mechanisms in X11 should continue to operate correctly. Applications that
directly access those font files in the DPS directory, however, may find
that the file has been superseded and no longer exists in that location.
Developers are encouraged to use the standard X11 mechanisms for accessing
fonts to avoid this problem.
The tools acroread (Adobe Acrobat® Reader),
xpsview, and showps have been
replaced with the more recent open source tools gsview and xpdf, which are
built on top of the Ghostscript® package.
These tools can be found on the
Applications CD in this release. Customers who made use of the old tools
should ensure that they install the new ones by selecting the images for
gsview, xpdf, and ghostscript from the Applications CD. The old tools will
no longer be available, and will be replaced with wrapper scripts.
The wrappers for acroread and xpsview/showps will invoke the new xpdf or
gsview commands respectively, but the wrapper scripts will pass all
parameters verbatim, and will not attempt any translation. Thus, if an
option changes or is not available for the new tool, customers may
encounter an error if they use that option with the old command name from
inside a script, for instance.
Ghostscript is a registered trademark of Artifex Software, Inc. PostScript
is a trademark and Acrobat is a registered trademark of Adobe Systems Incorporated.
The following changes have been
incorporated into the core IRIX 6.5.27 overlay CDs and the Applications CD.
New Software Enhancements
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Volatile cpusets
The IRIX 6.5.27 release supports volatile
cpusets, which are cpusets that can be
configured, created, and destroyed by regular
users.
Users that need to isolate work in non-batch
environments can use this feature to achieve their
needs without root access or the Scheduling.
For information, see the
cpuset(1) and cpuset(5) man pages.
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Tracking priority inheritance
In the IRIX 6.57 release, enabling the "scheduler"
event-mask logs priority inheritance actions to
rtmon logs.
Developers can use these new trace records to
analyze the real-time behavior of their
applications. For information, see the
rtmon-client(1) man page.
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NFS over IPv6
In the IRIX 6.5.27 release, NFS over IPv6 is supported for
both client and server.
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OpenSSH version 3.9p1
The included OpenSSH protocol suite in the IRIX 6.5.27 release
has been upgraded to version 3.9p1.
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Motif version 2.1.32
In IRIX 6.5.27, Motif 2.1.20 has been upgraded to Motif 2.1.32. This version
is a bug fix and compatibility update.
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New cpuset_tobind systune parameter
The IRIX 6.5.27 release provides the new system tuneable variable, cpuset_tobind. This
variable limits how the runon command and the sysmp system call with
MP_MUSTRUN command can be used.
The cpuset_tobind variable is a boolean variable with
the default setting of 0. Setting this variable to 1 indicates that for a thread
to bind to a CPU using runon, sysmp MP_MUSTRUN, or a related operation,
the CPU must be restricted, isolated, or part of a cpuset.
For information, see the dplace(1), runon(1),
sysmp(2), pthread_setrunon_np(3P), and cpuset(1) man pages.
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New parameters to manage highest available file descriptor
The IRIX 6.5.27 release provides the new system tuneable parameters
rlimit_nofile_cur_clamps_setrlimit and rlimit_nofile_cur_clamps_fdhi.
These system variables are boolean, with a default setting of 0 indicating
that they are inactive.
The rlimit_nofile_cur_clamps_setrlimit variable, if set to 1, controls
the behavior of the setrlimit and setrlimit64 system calls. In this
case a call to setrlimit(RLIMIT_NOFILE, &rlimit) where rlimit.rlim_cur
will result in leaving open file descriptors with values above the new
limit will result in a return of EINVAL. For information see the
getrlmit(2) man page.
The rlimit_nofile_cur_clamps_fdhi variable, if set to 1, affects the
behavior of the getdtablehi system call. In this case if there are open
file descriptors with values above the current process limit, then the
current process limit is returned. For information, see the
getdtablehi(3C) man page.
In addition to the new system tuning variables, the F_CLOSEM command has been
added to the fcntl system call. The F_CLOSEM command will close
all file descriptors greater than or equal to the file descriptor number
supplied by the caller.
For information, see the
fcntl(2) getdtablehi(3C) man page.
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PAM authentication support for SUNOS C2 security NIS master server
In IRIX 6.5.27, user authentication using PAM now supports IRIX as
a client of Sun NIS master servers with C2 security using
passwd.adjunct NIS maps.
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pam_tally module added for login tallying
In IRIX 6.5.27,
login/rsh/rlogin/telnet can make use of the pam_tally module to maintain
a count of unsuccessful login and deny access if too many attempts fail.
SGI Software Product Life
Cycle Management
In accordance with the SGI
software product life cycle management strategy announced in December
2002, SGI will announce support mode changes for various software
products on a semiannual basis. To view customer letters containing
support mode changes announced since December 2002, as well as the
latest IRIX Support Policy documents, visit the IRIX Support Policy Web
page on
Supportfolio Online.
IRIX OS Bundled Software
For information about the
bundled software that is included on the Applications
CD with this release, see CD Contents and the
Bundled software and licenses
web page.
System Platform Bundles
No changes have been made to
the demonstration software CDs developed for the specific system
platforms.
Freeware
Freeware products
and revisions supported for this release can be downloaded from
http://freeware.sgi.com/.
As of the IRIX 6.5.22 release, IRIX Freeware CDs are
no longer included with the IRIX Update kit.
Documentation
The following manuals have
been revised for this
release:
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ONC3/NFS Administrator's Guide
(007-0850-170)
includes information about the nfsstat(1M) command.
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XVM Volume Manager Administrator's Guide
(007-4003-018) includes new information about the
XVM snapshot feature.
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