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 6.5.24. To see the list of key features and changes for the IRIX 6.5 and IRIX 6.5.1 through 6.5.23 releases, see the previous IRIX features page.

For information about supported hardware and peripherals in IRIX 6.5.24, 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.

Packaging and Support Changes for IRIX 6.5.24

The following changes apply to the IRIX 6.5.24 release.

  • Packaging changes for CXFS

    Starting with IRIX 6.5.22, The IRIX CXFS software is no longer bundled in the IRIX overlay CDs but instead is on a separate CD that is labeled CXFS IRIX Server and Client 3.X for IRIX 6.5.X. This changes the installation procedure. For information on CXFS installation, see CXFS Administration Guide for SGI InfiniteStorage.

    Note: If you are upgrading from a previous IRIX release and have CXFS installed, you must upgrade both IRIX and CXFS. If you try to upgrade one without the other, conflicts will occur.

    CXFS customers should make sure that their CXFS support contract contains the CD media option. This option is required for future delivery of the latest features, enhancements, and bug fixes, available only on CD. The CD media option allows you to take advantage of secure and expedited delivery using the online ordering system, through Software Updates on Supportfolio, or through your local support center by telephone.

    For further information on this packaging change and CXFS support, go to the following page on Supportfolio: http://support.sgi.com/content_request/155033/index.html .

  • Changes to Support Mode Status

    The following workstations, graphics and scalable server systems were transitioned to retired support mode for the IRIX 6.5.23 release. The IRIX 6.5.24 release does not support installation on these systems.

    • Challenge S
    • Challenge M
    • Challenge DM
    • Challenge L
    • Challenge XL
    • Indigo
    • Indigo2
    • Indigo2 Extreme
    • Indigo2 Impact
    • Indy
    • Power Challenge
    • Power Indigo2
    • Power Onyx
    • Onyx1

    For information on IRIX operating system support mode changes for legacy MIPS, go to the following page on Supportfolio: http://support.sgi.com/content_request/155034/index.html.

    The following product was transitioned to retired support for the IRIX 6.5.23 release:

    • Distributed Computing Environment (DCE) / Distributed File System (DFS)

    Contact your local sales representative to discuss options for replacement or upgrade products.

  • 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.

IRIX 6.5.24 Key New Features

The following changes have been incorporated into the core IRIX 6.5.24 overlay CDs and the Applications CD.

New Hardware Platforms or Features

  • The IRIX 6.5.24 release supports LSI Dual Port Ultra 4 SCSI PCIX on Tezro Visual Workstations, Origin 350, Onyx 350 IR, Onyx 350 IP. and Origin 3000 PX/IX Bricks.

New Software Enhancements - Maintenance and Feature Stream

Filesystems

  • GRIO version 2
    The IRIX 6.5.24 release supports GRIO version 2, the next-generation guaranteed-rate I/O product from SGI. GRIO version 2 now supports CXFS filesystems shared among nodes in a cluster as well as locally attached XFS filesystems.

    Although you can have both the GRIO version 1 and GRIO version 2 subsystems installed on the same machine, only one of them can be active. For more information, see the Guaranteed-Rate I/O Version 2 Guide.

  • XVM multi-host failover
    The IRIX 6.5.24 release supports XVM multi-host failover, initially supporting the SGI TP9100 and 3rd-party RAID storage. New NVSRAM will be made available on Supportfolio Online that will permit XVM multi-host failover to work with the SGI TP9300 RAID, SGI TP9400 RAID with 4884 controllers, and SGI TP9500 RAID. When using XVM multi-host failover, you can manually specify the attributes associated with a storage path by using the failover2.conf file.

    In support of XVM multi-host failover, XVM now supports the xvm foconfig and the xvm foswitch commands. The xvm foconfig command parses a failover2.conf file on a running system. The xvm foswitch command switches the path used to access an XVM physvol.

    For information on XVM multi-host failover, the failover2.conf file, and the foconfig and foswitch commands, see the XVM Volume Manager Administrator's Guide and the XVM help screens.

  • CXFS
    CXFS 3.2 for IRIX 6.5.24 is released on a separate CD and includes some of the following new features:

    • Support for CXFS multiOS Client I/O path failover

    • CXFS private network failover

    • CXFS token obtain optimization

    • Configuration tools support for the CXFS Mac OS X multiOS client

    For information on these features, see CXFS Administration Guide for SGI InfiniteStorage and the CXFS release notes included with the CXFS 3.2 release.

cpusets

  • New cpuset features
    IRIX 6.5.24 provides the following new features for cpusets:

    • system cpuset

      Administrators can now create a special cpuset for kernel daemons to run in called the "system" cpuset. This will help keep the daemons responsive even under high load. For information, see the boot_cpuset(4) man page.

    • cpuset inspection

      The top and ps commands can now display information about particular cpusets or what cpusets processes belong to. For information see the top(1) and ps(1) man pages.

Profiling

  • Interrupt handler inspection
    In IRIX 6.5.24, IRIXview and the rtmond tools can now report more meaningful information for kernel interrupt handlers threads. Running rtmond with the new -H option will cause the name of reported threads to be more descriptive. For information, see the rtmond(1) man page.

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 manual is new for the IRIX 6.5.24 release:

  • Guaranteed-Rate I/O Version 2 Guide, 007-4244-001

The following manuals have been revised for the new features incorporated into this release:

  • CXFS Administration Guide for SGI InfiniteStorage, 007-4016-020, includes support for CXFS 3.2 features, RAID firmware updates, and information about how hardware changes affect I/O fencing.

  • IRIX Admin: Networking and Mail, 007-2860-011, includes information about how to configure Primary and Secondary Ethernet connections on the new dual-port Gigabit Ethernet board.

  • IRIX Impressario.5.24 Programming Guide, 007-1633-070, includes updates reflecting changes in font support and provides a new appendix showing psrip command line options that can be used when defining an alternate RIP.

  • IRIX Impressario.5.24 User's Guide, 007-1632-070, includes small updates reflecting current font support.

  • Topics in IRIX Programming, 007-2478-010, includes information reflecting support for the open source tools gsview and xpdf.

  • XVM Volume Manager Administrator's Guide, 007-4003-017, includes information on multi-host failover and small technical updates.