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. This release family supports all SGI hardware platforms supported by IRIX 6.2, 6.3, and 6.4, except for Crimson. Significant additional software has been packaged with IRIX 6.5, including some important system and network management and interoperability tools.

The page contains a partial list of the key new features and changes for:

IRIX 6.5.12

To see the list of key features and changes for the IRIX 6.5 and IRIX 6.5.1 through 6.5.11 releases, see the previous IRIX features page.

Look for information about the IRIX 6.5 release family on Supportfolio Online (http://support.sgi.com) and www.sgi.com.

For details on any of these new features and changes, refer to the release notes.

Please be aware that some features listed here are only applicable for certain software bundles or hardware configurations.

IRIX 6.5.12 Key New Features

The following features are in the core 6.5.12 overlays.

New Software Supported

Feature Stream Only:

• Supports the labeling of disks as XVM system disks in the XVM Volume Manager. This lets you create XVM logical volumes that include the partitions of a system disk. The following XVM system disk features are supported:
  • Root partitions can be mirrored
  • There can be multiple root partitions on a system disk
  • You can include usr and swap partitions in any XVM logical volume configuration, including mirrors, concats, and stripes
  • A system disk can include slices that are not part of a root, usr, or swap partition

  You can now convert existing system disks to XVM system disks, and then use their partitions as part of an XVM logical volume. After you have converted an existing system disk to an XVM disk, you can convert the disk back to its original state by unlabeling the disk with the XVM unlabel command. For information on XVM system disks, see the XVM Volume Manager Administrator's Guide.

Maintenance and Feature Stream:

• OpenGL Performer 2.4.1 execution environment, which is a powerful suite of tools and features that creates real-time visual simulation and other professional performance-oriented 3D graphics applications for the IRIX operating system. The following new features for OpenGL Performer provide enhanced realism and peak-performance rendering:
  • Programmable model shading using pfShader
  • Use of pfVolFog for rendering layered and patchy fog
  • Use of pfRotorWash to create the visual effect of downwash in helicopter simulation
  • Double-precision matrix support for rendering extremely large databases where objects are far away from the origin
  • CPU priority specification to allow multiple run-time processes to run on the same processor
  • Multi-pipe scalability enhancements
  • Improved pfLOD behavior to allow custom evaluation functions
  • Speed and functionality enhancements for pfFlux, pfCliptexture, and pfLightpoints
  • pfHyperpipe support for the DPLEX hardware option
  • EventView performance tuning tool for instrumenting and tuning your OpenGL Performer application
• The IRIX tape-support feature consists of a tape support driver, personality daemons, and a daemon that manages the personality daemons. The feature enables new personality daemons to be developed and added individually. The tape-support driver, which co-exists with the current IRIX tape driver (tpsc), passes all device-dependent tasks, except for I/O processing, to a personality daemon. This release supports various devices including the Fibre Channel implementation on the StorageTek 9840 and T9940A tape drives. The reserve, release, preempt, clear, and prsv commands are available for these tape drives on the mt command. For more information, see the mt(1), tsarchive(1M), tsdaemon(1M), tserrpt(1M), tsset(1M), tsstop(1M), ts.config(4), and ts(7) man pages.
• Updated FLEXlm v7.2e support from GLOBEtrotter Software, Inc. The license manager daemon and the floating license server are built in V5 compatibility mode. For backwards compatibility, the client libraries and header files are still based on FLEXlm v6.1. For more information, see the FLEXlm End User Manual and the associated man pages.
• The Scheduled Transfer Protocol (STP) has moved from the feature stream to the maintenance and feature stream. STP is now a mature supported protocol and it includes TRIX support.

Applications CD:

• SGI web server, based on the Apache web server version 1.3.17, replaces the Netscape FastTrack web server; for details on how to change your default web server and configure and administer the SGI web server, see Caveats to Read After You Upgrade
• WebSetup 3.2 has been updated to support the SGI web server based on Apache
• NEdit version 5.1.1a has added extensions to the regular expression syntax, an improved international character set input, new macro subroutines, and improved syntax highlighting for several programming languages
• Runtime Plug-in for IRIX, Java(TM) Edition 1.1.1b has added support for the Netscape N32 plugin and the O32 plugin
• The following products from the Isogon Corporation have been removed: LicensePower/iFOR IS4.0.1 ARK and LicensePower/iFOR IS4.0.1 CRK. Sales and support has been divested to the Isogon Corporation at http://www.isogon.com. For more information on support modes, see the Support Policy page at http://www.support.sgi.com/news/support/index.html#support_policy.
• Impressario 2.8.5 supports two new HP printer drivers, HP4050 and HP8100

Bundled Software:

• Removal of the Out of Box Experience (OOBE) CD
• Removal of the Hot Mix CD

For more information about the bundled software that is included with this release, see CD Contents and the Bundled Software and Licenses web page that you can access from the Welcome web page.

Freeware CD:

• Security-related bug fixes or updates have been made to analog, bind, htdig, nmh, and openssh
• Several new packages have been added to the archives, including cpio, licq, and vnc
• Many packages have been updated or patched, including ddd, gdb, gimp, nedit, postgresql, and other GNOME 1.2 related packages

For more information about the freeware that is included with this release, including a complete list of the freeware packages, see http://freeware.sgi.com/ .

Documentation

• IRIX Environment Variables Ready Reference, part number 007-3942-001. This publication describes the environment variables that are used on IRIX operating systems, in the compiling environment, and in other applications that run on IRIX operating systems (such as SpeedShop).
• The CXFS Software Installation and Administration Guide (part number 007-4016-008) was rewritten to include more troubleshooting information.