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Postinstallation Caveats

This page documents caveats that could significantly affect the user's experience after upgrading to IRIX 6.5. This page also includes a Release Notes Addenda and Errata section. (This is not a complete list of all known bugs, workarounds, or changes, which are documented in the Release Notes for each individual product.)

Remote Host Display Now Off By Default
In the interest of security, the ability to display applications that are running on other systems is now disabled by default. There are few different ways you can re-enable the remote host display. For details, see "About the Remote Display Feature" in Chapter 13 of the online Desktop User's Guide.
(on O2 only) Frame Dropping During Realtime Video Capture (Includes Adobe Premiere)
If you are using the utility dmrecord to capture full size, full rate video on O2 (NTSC, 640x486, 30 frames per second, or PAL, 760x586, 25 frames per second), you will only be able to capture a few minutes of video before frame dropping occurs. Video capture code derived from dmrecord will also have this problem, including Adobe Premiere. This problem does not occur when you use Media Recorder. Therefore, if you need to capture long video sequences without dropping any frames, we recommend that you use Media Recorder. Please check the mediarecorder(1) man page to make sure that you have the proper system configuration to perform high quality video capture. A patch for the dmrecord frame dropping bug is being created, and should be available at the time of this IRIX 6.5 release.
-a Option for xfsdump Temporarily Omitted From 6.5
This caveat affects users running DMF. The lack of the -a option can greatly increase the size of xfsdump output. The next maintenance release (6.5.1) will bring the -a option back to xfsdump.
Possible Errors When Playing a Movie From Netscape
When you try to play a movie from a Web page, you may see this error: SGI Movie Plug-in: Error downloading into cache. Please increase disk cache (Network Preferences Dialog). This is a known bug. When this happens, you may need to restart Netscape or try launching the movie again; the plug-in should work the second time. You may also see the following error when the movie closes: waitpid error: No child processes. You can ignore this error.
Printer May Not Be Recognized If Turned On After System
Even after a printer is configured, it may not function if you turn it on after turning on your system. This is because the printer device is not present in the hardware graph. To work around this problem, perform the following commands in a shell:

% su

# cd /dev

# ./MAKEDEV

# ioconfig -f /hw

# exit

Full Hostname Now Used By Default
The graphical system administration tools now use the fully qualified hostname by default. This will affect scripts that assume that only the partial hostname is used. Scripts may need to be modified to use "hostname -s" rather than "hostname." Alternatively, override the default and use only the partial hostname. This issue only arises for those installing on new systems or reconfiguring existing systems after installing IRIX 6.5.
IRIS Performer Backward Compatibility Bug
The performer_eoe.compat subsystems shipped with IRIX 6.5 contain a bug which prevents certain dynamically linked IRIS Performer-based programs from executing properly. Certain programs, including the VisFly Demo, compiled using versions prior to 2.2 may fail with unresolvable symbol errors, or warnings from pfdFindConverterDSO(). This bug will be addressed in a future maintenance release (probably 6.5.1).
New File for Setting NIS Server
It is no longer possible to set the NIS server in the /etc/config/ypbind.options file. If a system is set up this way, create the file /var/yp/binding/<DOMAIN>/ypservers, where <DOMAIN> is the NIS domain name, and type the NIS server on a new line in this file.
Gang-Scheduled Graphics Processes Can Cause Graphics to Hang
Programs using the schedctl(2) system call to choose gang scheduling mode (SGS_GANG) may cause the graphics to hang if the gang-scheduled process uses graphics. (Gang-scheduled processes that do not use graphics are not affected by this problem.)

Release Notes Addenda and Errata

The following items are corrections or additions for product Release Notes.

ProDev WorkShop: Obtaining Evaluation Licenses
ProDev WorkShop evaluation software is included on the IRIX Development Foundation CD. Evaluation licenses can be obtained by visiting http://www.sgi.com/Products/license.html, by sending an email to demolicense@sgi.com, or contacting your local Silicon Graphics sales office.
Compilers: Text Error in Release Notes
The compiler Release Notes contain the word "beta" in reference to the software version. Ignore the word beta. The Release Notes are applicable to this 6.5 release version of the compiler software.
(on OCTANE only) MXI Graphics Rendering: Can Cause Artifacts
This bug has been observed intermittently during hardware (MXI graphics) rendering with Alias|Wavefront Maya, and at least one other demo program. The result is that every other scanline is not rendered (or rendered black).This problem also exists on IRIX 6.4 with the current patchset. A fix for this bug is expected soon.
Sendmail: OAnsd:mail.aliases Directive is Case Sensitive
Do not use the nsd sendmail alias map if you have aliases that are not lower case.
(O2 R10000 Only) gl_dev: glReadPixels and glDrawPixels Performance Bug
The R10000 O2 may suffer a performance degradation of up to 25% for glReadPixels and glDrawPixels. This is bug # 578625, and will be fixed in a 6.5 maintenance release.
IRIX Scheduling: (Behavior Change) Fairness of Multi-Threaded Process Scheduling
This behavior affects multi-threaded processes created with sproc(2) system call or with pthreads(5); it also includes parallel applications that use Power Fortran/'C' which are threaded with sproc(2).

In IRIX 6.5, each multi-threaded process is accounted as a single unit for scheduling purposes -- each thread in the process is not accounted separately as in IRIX 6.2 and in some patches of IRIX 6.4. This single accounting means that in a contented system, a non multi-threaded process and a multi-threaded process get an equal amount of CPU time regardless of the number of threads in the multi-threaded process. This results in fair scheduling for all processes, including multi-threaded processes that dynamically adjust their parallelism in response to system load (for example, Power Fortran/'C' applications that set OMP_DYNAMIC to TRUE).

Further, there is no special effort made by the kernel scheduler to evenly schedule the threads in a multi-threaded process. The result is that contending threads of a single multi-threaded process may get unequal amounts of CPU time. However, the user level schedulers in Power Fortran/'C' and pthreads library ensure that critical threads needed for the forward progress of a computation are allocated a CPU by preferential yielding of the CPU by other user threads that need the critical threads' results.

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