7    New and Changed Features in Version 4.0F

Tru64 UNIX Version 4.0F replaces earlier versions of the operating system software and provides new or additional support for the following:

• Maintenance for previous versions of the operating system

• Hardware-related support, including the following:

  • Support for new AlphaServer processors

  • Support for Fibre Channel based storage

  • Logical partitions for AlphaServer GS140 system

• New and enhanced features, including the following:

  • Upgraded Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol (DHCP)

  • Change to ATM PACING Virtual Circuits bandwidth accounting

  • Extensions to the atom command's programmable interfaces

  • Ability to examine the stack of a user program that caused a kernel crash dump

  • Introduction of a new Compaq Analyze utility

  • Secure version of the syslog facility

  • Changes to VFS and AdvFS tunable attributes

  • Addition of Visual Threads

  • Enhancement to the bootable tape facility

  • Introduction of Compaq Advanced Printing Software Version 1.0

  • A new version of Netscape Communicator

  • Introduction of Compaq Insight Manager

  • Support for Universal Serial Bus (USB) keyboards and mice

  • AltaVista search capability on documentation CD-ROM

  • Support for Digital Versatile Disc (DVD)

  • Availability of COM for Tru64 UNIX

For more information about some of these features, see the following sections.

The following sections provide more information on the major new features included in Tru64 UNIX Version 4.0F:

7.1    New Hardware Support

Tru64 UNIX Version 4.0F adds support for the following systems:

• Compaq AlphaServer DS20

• Compaq AlphaServer ES40

7.2    Support for Fibre Channel Based Storage

Tru64 UNIX now contains support for Fibre Channel (FC) based storage. Initially, device support is limited to the KGPSA adapters and HSG80 disk arrays interconnected via FC switches. The FC devices appear to the system as normal SCSI devices. As such, Fibre Channel configurations are bounded by the SCSI-2 namespace exported via the standard SCSI disk (rz) and tape (tz) drivers. Many of the configuration restrictions will be removed in a future release.

As the Fibre Channel address space is much larger and more sparsely-populated than parallel SCSI, a persistent translation of SCSI target IDs to FC addresses is necessitated in the device driver for the FC adapter. Refer to the emx(7) and emx_data.c(4) reference pages for further information on how this is performed.

For the this release, support for Fibre Channel storage is limited to data devices only. A Fibre Channel disk device cannot be used for boot, swap, or dump. Support for these features will appear in a later release.

Caution

In this release, installation software does not discern between Fibre Channel and Parallel SCSI disks. All are presented as potential install-to devices. If a Fibre Channel disk is selected, a portion of the installation process will succeed before an ultimate failure is encountered. This issue will be resolved in an upcoming release. Fibre Channel disk devices can be added as secondary swap devices via fstab(4) or swapon(8). However, doing so usually places the FC device into the list of potential dump devices for the system. In the event of a system panic, the FC disk can be selected as a dump target. If so, the system will encounter a fatal error and will abort the dump process. This issue will be resolved in an upcoming release.

7.3    Logical Partitions for AlphaServer GS140 System

The logical partitioning feature allows a single AlphaServer GS140 system to be partitioned into as many as three logical partitions. Each partition runs a separate instance of the operating system. For a complete description of logical partitions, refer to the System Adminstration guide.

The minimum AlphaServer GS140 firmware revision for logical partitions support is Version 5.4.

At the time of this release, the AlphaServer GS140 Model 6-525 is the only system supported for logical partitioning. Refer to the Systems and Options Catalog for information on newly-supported systems.

7.4    Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol

This version of Tru64 UNIX includes an upgraded and improved Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol (DHCP) database. The new database supports a new database format. Therefore, if you are currently using DHCP from a prior version of Tru64 UNIX, you must convert the database to the new format.

The improvements to DHCP include:

• Force broadcast reply

• Ignore hardware type

• Return bootfile in header

• Server policy consistency check

• Allow the server canonical name

For more information on DHCP, see the Network Administration guide, the Technical Overview, and the joind(8) reference page.

7.5    ATM PACING VC Bandwidth Accounting Change

In this release, the bandwidth used by pacing virtual circuits (VCs) is not deducted from the total bandwidth in the constant bit rate (CBR) reserved resource pool. Therefore, ATM drivers can now overbook the driver's bandwidth. In addition, reserved resources can be applied to CBR VCs only.

In previous releases of the operating system, the bandwidth used by pacing VCs was deducted from the total bandwidth in the constant bit rate (CBR) reserved resource pool. This prevented ATM drivers that supported paced unspecified bit rate (UBR) traffic from allowing paced VCs to overbook the driver's bandwidth.

7.6    Extensions to atom's Programmable Interfaces

The atom command has been enhanced. It now provides a -pthread flag and RTL routines to help tool-writers develop thread safe program analysis tools, including support for deferred (but not asynchronous) thread cancellation. The cancellation support has some impact on the performance of thread-safe tools. See the atom(1), Thread(5), and pthread_setcanceltype(3) reference pages.

The atom command's AddCallProto(5) instrumentation RTL routine now provides the FREGV argument type, to let tool writers pass floating-point register values to analysis routines.

The atom command's -gp flag now retains all debug information in applications that were compiled with the -g option.

The atom command's new -w2 switch suppresses warnings regarding analysis routines.

7.7    Ability to Examine the Stack of a User Program that Caused a Kernel Crash Dump

You can now view the user stack of a program that precipitated a kernel crash dump.

7.8    Compaq Analyze Utility

The Compaq Analyze utility enables you to analyze binary error log files (located in /var/adm/binary.errlog). Refer to the System Administration guide for information on using this new tool.

Compaq Analyze supports selected EV6-class processors in this release.

To function on a supported system, Compaq Analyze requires a modified Common Error Log Header, which is created automatically if binlogd detects that the value of rpb_proctype is equivalent to ST_DEC_6600 (EV6-series processors). This modified header is supported by DECevent.

The AlphaServer 8400 (with EV6 processors) is not supported by Compaq Analyze. This system is supported by DECevent using the older error log format.

7.9    Secure Version of syslog

The security of the syslog facility has been enhanced in this release. Unless the domain host name of a remote host is entered in the local file, /etc/syslog.auth, the local system will not log any syslog messages from that remote host.

If you are installing the secure version of syslogd on a system, and you have configured or intend to configure other hosts to forward syslog messages to the system, refer to the syslogd(8) and syslog.auth(4) reference pages.

7.10    Changes to VFS and AdvFS Tunable Attributes

The default value of the Virtual File System (VFS) vfs subsystem attribute name-cache-hash-size has changed from 256 to a dynamically calculated value. The new value is name-cache-size divided by 8 and rounded up to the next power of 2, or 8192, whichever is less.

On systems where the nchsz configuration variable in /sys/conf/param.c has been modified by the customer, the customer-provided value will be used. Compaq recommends that any previous customization of nchsz in the param.c file be changed to:

int   nchsz;
 

Compaq also recommends that you use the default dynamic calculation of the size of the namei cache hash change table.

If a customer specified value is still desired, Compaq recommends modifying the value of name-cache-hash-size in /etc/sysconfigtab, instead of modifying nchsz in /sys/conf/param.c. See sysconfigdb(8) for more information.

The default value of the AdvFS subsystem attribute AdvfsMaxDevQLen has changed from 80 to 24 (number of I/O requests). The new default of 24 reduces the number of I/O requests queued to a device. A lower value favors response time by reducing the number of I/O requests that may be already queued ahead of synchronous read and write requests.

A new AdvFS subsystem attribute, AdvfsCacheHashSize is added. AdvfsCacheHashSize determines the size of the hash table for the buffers of the AdvFS buffer cache. The minimum value is 1024. The maximum value is 65536.

The default value is the size of the AdvFS buffer cache (AdvfsCacheMaxPercent) divided by 10 and rounded up to the next power of 2, or 8192, whichever is less. To save a small amount of space in the kernel at the expense of longer hash queue search time, the AdvfsCacheHashSize can be set to a smaller value.

For more information about VFS and AdvFS tuning, refer to the System Configuration and Tuning guide.

7.11    Visual Threads

Visual Threads is a new tool available on the Tru64 UNIX Associated Products Volume 2 CD-ROM that lets you analyze your multithreaded applications for potential logic and performance problems. It is licensed as part of the Developer's Toolkit for Tru64 UNIX.

You can use Visual Threads with DECthreads applications that use POSIX threads (Pthreads) and with Java applications.

Visual Threads features include the following:

• Detects violation conditions based on the application of particular rules in your application. Several predefined rules look for data protection errors, deadlock conditions, programming errors, and performance issues.

• Lets you use templates to define your own rules to specify criteria for violation conditions.

• Keeps track of the events associated with the violations.

• Records events to a trace file so that you can play back and analyze them later.

• Dynamically displays events as they occur, with controls for filtering.

• Suspends execution of the application when it detects violation conditions. You can choose from several options at this point, including invoking the debugger in the appropriate context for your application.

• Dynamically monitors multithreading objects (threads, mutexes, and so on) in real time.

• Provides easy access to object-level statistics and current state information, including use of resources (for example, the mutexes a particular thread holds).

7.12    Bootable Tape Enhancements

This release adds new functionality to the bootable tape facility. For more information, refer to the System Administration guide.

7.13    Compaq Advanced Printing Software

This release includes Compaq Advanced Printing Software Version 1.0 for Tru64 UNIX. The software subsets and documentation are located on the Tru64 UNIX Associated Products Volume 2 CD-ROM.

Advanced Printing Software, an implementation of Xerox Corporation's PrintXchange technology, is a flexible, distributed, client/server printing system based on ISO and POSIX standards.

This implementation supports a wide variety of popular printer devices and the common printer connection methods. The software subsets include server processes, command line utilities, and graphical user interface (GUI) tools that cater to the needs of end users and system administrators. The system can be configured as the primary print system, or it can work together with existing lpr/lpd based printing systems.

Documentation includes a System Administration and Operation Guide, a Command Reference Guide, a User Guide, an Installation Guide, CDE Help, and Release Notes.

7.14    Netscape Communicator Version 4.5

This release of Tru64 UNIX contains Version 4.5 of Netscape Communicator. For information about how to install, configure, and invoke Communicator, see the Tru64 UNIX Installation Guide.

7.15    Compaq Insight Manager

This release provides Web-based Enterprise Management (WBEM) capabilities by integrating the Compaq Insight Manager Agents into Tru64 UNIX Insight Manager enables Web-based browsing and monitoring of local and remote system hardware. You can activate these Web browsing features from a dedicated HTTP port, or from the Compaq Insight Manager CIM32 or CIMXE Management Consoles running on Compaq Windows NT servers.

7.16    Support for Universal Serial Bus Keyboards and Mice

Universal Serial Bus (USB) is a communications architecture that gives a computer system the ability to interconnect a variety of devices using a simple four-wire cable. The USB is actually a two-wire serial communication (receive and transmit) link that runs at either 1.5 or 12 megabits per second (mbs). The remaining two wires are used for power and ground. USB protocols can configure devices at startup or when they are plugged in at run time. These devices are broken into various device classes. Each device class defines the common behavior and protocols for devices that serve similar functions.

This version provides limited USB support for keyboard and mouse devices only. For proper usage of USB keyboards and mice with this version, the following guidelines and restrictions apply:

• USB keyboards and mice must be attached to the system before the system is powered on.

• A non-USB keyboard and a USB keyboard cannot be used together on the same system. In the event that both types are attached, the non-USB keyboard has priority. The same rule applies for mice.

• If a USB keyboard is used, a USB mouse must also be used. It is not advisable to mix a non-USB keyboard with a USB mouse, as the system will be inoperable. The same rule applies for USB keyboards and non-USB mice.

7.17    AltaVista Search on Documentation CD-ROM

The Tru64 UNIX Documentation CD-ROM now includes AltaVista CD-ROM Search software, with a complete index of the HTML documentation set. The AltaVista software runs on an x86-based PC with Windows 95, Windows 98, or Windows NT Version 4.0 or higher.

7.18    Support for Digital Versatile Disc (DVD)

Tru64 UNIX Version 4.0F includes preliminary support for the native DVD file system, called DVDFS, together with documentation. This preliminary implementation is not fully functional.

7.19    Availability of COM for Tru64 UNIX

COM for Tru64 UNIX is available for downloading from Compaq.

COM for Tru64 UNIX implements the Microsoft Common Object Model (COM) as well as required underlying Windows capabilities on the Compaq Tru64 UNIX platform.

Using COM for Tru64 UNIX you can:

• Port COM server applications from 32-bit UNIX and Windows NT platforms to the Tru64 UNIX platform where they can take advantage of the Tru64 UNIX speed and storage capacity.

• Create wrappers for legacy Tru64 UNIX applications, providing COM access to these applications by Windows clients.

• Develop new distributed UNIX applications that take advantage of COM re-use, version independence, and language independence capabilities.

COM for Tru64 UNIX will be incorporated in the Tru64 UNIX operating system kit in a future release. It is licensed as an extension of the Tru64 UNIX product; no additional license is required to use the COM for Tru64 UNIX software on a system running the Tru64 UNIX operating system. It is available via download at no charge from the following URL:

http://www.unix.digital.com/com