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1<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//IETF//DTD HTML//EN">
2<!-- $Revision: 1.1.1.1 $ -->
3<html>
4  <head>
5    <title>SysInfo 3.5 Release Notes</title>
6  </head>
7
8  <body bgcolor=#ffffff text=#000000 link=#ff0000 vlink=#cc0000 alink=#cc0000 background="http://www.magnicomp.com/images/yellow_weave.gif">
9
10<CENTER>
11<FONT COLOR=#FF0000 SIZE=+4>
12<b>
13<a href="http://www.MagniComp.com">
14<img src="http://www.MagniComp.com/images/magnicomp-logo-yweave.jpg" alt="MagniComp Systems" border=0>
15</a>
16</b>
17</FONT>
18</CENTER>
19<hr>
20<br>
21
22
23    <center><h1><FONT COLOR="#000099">SysInfo 3.5 Release Notes</font></h1></center>
24
25<h2><FONT COLOR="#000099">New License</FONT></h2>
26<p>
27In order to fund future improvements to SysInfo, a new license scheme is
28introduced with version 3.5.  The
29new license allows no-cost use by non-profit and educational institutions
30and requires payment for use by all other users.  More information, including
31pricing is available by clicking
32<a href="http://www.magnicomp.com/cgi-dat/mcservices.cgi">here</a>
33</p>
34<p>
35SysInfo will automatically detect if it's being run on an educational
36or non-profit system
37if the domain name of the system is one of the known educational or
38non-profit domains.
39Currently this includes:
40<UL>
41      <LI>.edu
42      <LI>.edu.<I>CC</I>
43      <LI>.ac.<I>CC</I>
44      <LI>.uni-*.de
45      <LI>.org
46</UL>
47where <I>CC</I> is a country code.
48All other institutions must
49<a href="http://www.magnicomp.com/cgi-dat/mcservices.cgi">register</a>
50and request a (free) license.
51</p>
52<p>
53SysInfo will automatically allow 60-days of free use for demonstration purposes
54whenever run with no license found.
55</p>
56
57<h2><FONT COLOR="#000099">New Platform Support</FONT></h2>
58    <TABLE border=0 cellpadding=5>
59      <TR>
60        <TD valign=top><i>Solaris 7 (SunOS 5.7)</i></TD>
61        <TD>Full support for all Solaris 7
62          systems, including 64-bit (UltraSPARC) systems.
63          </TD>
64      </TR>
65      <TR>
66        <TD valign=top><i>IRIX 6.5</i></TD>
67        <TD>Add support for IRIX 6.5.
68          </TD>
69      </TR>
70      <TR>
71        <TD valign=top><i>Linux 2.0 on x86<i></TD>
72        <TD>This is the first version of SysInfo to
73        include support for Linux.  All but
74        device (hardware) information is available.  Linux 2.1 should
75        also work, but hasn't been tested.  See
76        <a href="#linuxnotes">Linux Notes</a> for more information.
77          </TD>
78      </TR>
79      <TR>
80        <TD valign=top><i>FreeBSD on x86</TD>
81        <TD>Introducing support for FreeBSD on x86
82        systems.  FreeBSD versions 2.2.x are supported.  Version 3.0
83        will be supported in the next release.
84        </TD>
85      </TR>
86      <TR>
87        <TD valign=top><i>BSD/OS on x86<i></TD>
88        <TD>Introducing support for BSDi's BSD/OS on
89        x86 systems.  BSD/OS 3.1 and 4.0 are supported.
90        </TD>
91      </TR>
92      <TR>
93        <TD valign=top><i>HP-UX 11.0<i></TD>
94        <TD>Add support for HP-UX 11.0.
95        </TD>
96      </TR>
97    </TABLE>
98
99<h2><FONT COLOR="#000099"><a name="supportplatforms">Supported Platforms</a></FONT></h2>
100<p>
101The following table indicates what platforms are supported for this
102release of
103<b>SysInfo</b>.
104This platform list is subject to change with each <i>dot dot</i> release of
105<b>SysInfo</b>.
106</p>
107<TABLE border=1 cellpadding=5  bgcolor="#ccff99">
108<TR  bgcolor="#AAAAAA">
109<TH COLSPAN=3></TH><TH COLSPAN=4>SysInfo Class of Information</TH>
110</TR>
111<TR  bgcolor="#AAAAAA">
112<TH>Man.</TH><TH>OS</TH><TH>Hard- ware</TH>
113<TH>Gen- eral</TH><TH>Ker- nel</TH><TH>Sys- conf</TH>
114<TH>Dev- ice</TH><TH>Notes</TH>
115</TR>
116
117<TR align=center>
118<TD>Sun</TD><TD>Solaris 1.x (SunOS 4.1.x)</TD><TD>SPARC</TD>
119        <TD>Y</TD><TD>Y</TD><TD>Y</TD><TD>Y</TD>
120        <TD>Not fully tested, but should work.</TD>
121</TR>
122<TR align=center>
123<TD>Sun</TD><TD>Solaris 2.x (SunOS 5.x)</TD><TD>SPARC</TD>
124        <TD>Y</TD><TD>Y</TD><TD>Y</TD><TD>Y</TD>
125        <TD>Solaris 2.5.1 - 7 (SunOS 5.5.1 - 5.7) verified working.
126        See <a href="#platnotes">Platform Notes</a></TD>
127</TR>
128<TR align=center>
129<TD>Sun</TD><TD>Solaris 2.x (SunOS 5.x)</TD><TD>x86</TD>
130        <TD>Y</TD><TD>Y</TD><TD>Y</TD><TD>Y</TD>
131        <TD>Solaris 2.6 (SunOS 5.6) tested on limited hardware.</TD>
132</TR>
133<TR align=center>
134<TD>IBM</TD><TD>AIX 3.x, 4.x</TD><TD>RS6000</TD>
135        <TD>Y</TD><TD>N</TD><TD>Y</TD><TD>Y</TD>
136        <TD>&nbsp;</TD>
137</TR>
138<TR align=center>
139<TD>SGI</TD><TD>IRIX 5.3, 6.x</TD><TD>MIPS</TD>
140        <TD>Y</TD><TD>N</TD><TD>Y</TD><TD>Y</TD>
141        <TD>IRIX 5.x may no longer work.  Tested on IRIX 6.2 and 6.5.</TD>
142</TR>
143<TR align=center>
144<TD>HP</TD><TD>HP-UX 9.x 10.x 11.x</TD><TD>hp9000</TD>
145        <TD>Y</TD><TD>Y</TD><TD>N</TD><TD>Y</TD>
146        <TD>&nbsp;</TD>
147</TR>
148<TR align=center>
149<TD>&nbsp;</TD><TD>BSD/OS 3.1, 4.0</TD><TD>x86</TD>
150        <TD>Y</TD><TD>Y</TD><TD>Y</TD><TD>Y</TD>
151        <TD>&nbsp;</TD>
152</TR>
153<TR align=center>
154<TD>&nbsp;</TD><TD>FreeBSD 2.2.x, 3.0</TD><TD>x86</TD>
155        <TD>Y</TD><TD>Y</TD><TD>Y</TD><TD>Y</TD>
156        <TD>See <a href="#platnotes">Platform Notes</a></TD>
157</TR>
158<TR align=center>
159<TD>&nbsp;</TD><TD>Linux 2.0</TD><TD>x86</TD>
160        <TD>Y</TD><TD>Y</TD><TD>Y</TD><TD>P</TD>
161        <TD>See <a href="#platnotes">Platform Notes</a></TD>
162</TR>
163
164<TR BGCOLOR="#aaaaaa">
165<TD COLSPAN=8><B>KEY:</B><BR>
166<B>Y</B> - Yes, it's supported<br>
167<B>N</B> - No, it's not supported<br>
168<B>P</B> - Planned<br>
169</TD>
170</TR>
171
172</TABLE>
173
174<h2><FONT COLOR="#000099">Major New Features/Improvements</FONT></h2>
175A complete list of changes in this release is available by reading the
176<B>CHANGES</B> file provided with the distribution.
177    <TABLE border=0 cellpadding=5>
178      <TR>
179        <TD valign=top><i>HPUX<i></TD>
180        <TD>Full device (hardware) support is now provided for
181          HP-UX 10 and later systems.
182        </TD>
183      </TR>
184      <TR>
185        <TD valign=top><i>New -msglevel option<i></TD>
186        <TD>
187          A major revamp of how messages are output from SysInfo has been
188          performed.  All output is now classified and output through the
189          <b>SImsg()</b> call. 
190          The <b>-msglevel</b> option modifies what types of
191          messages are output.
192          </TD></TR>
193      <TR>
194        <TD valign=top><i>New /etc/sysinfo.cf<i></TD>
195        <TD>
196          A new file called <b>/etc/sysinfo.cf</b> has been introduced
197          to make binary distributions of SysInfo more easily installed.
198          This file uses the same syntax as described in <b>sysinfo.cf(5)</b>
199          which now supports the <b>ConfDir</B> <i>PathName</I> directive.
200          By specifing a <i>PathName</I> you can override the value of
201          <b>CONFDIR</B> compiled into SysInfo.  For example, to use
202          <b>/net/sysinfoserver/conf</b> as your SysInfo configuration
203          directory, you could create a file
204          </b>/etc/sysinfo.cf</b> with the line:
205                <PRE>
206        ConfDir /net/sysinfoserver/conf</PRE>
207        </TD>
208      <TR>
209        <TD valign=top><i>New Device Fields<i></TD>
210        <TD>Devices now have several new fields:
211          <i>Vendor, Serial, Revision, ClassType, Driver</i>.
212          The <i>Model</i> name no longer includes the <i>Vendor</i> name
213          in most cases.  These should be visible in "-level all" output
214          as well as in the <b>DevInfo_t</b> data type.
215          </TD></TR>
216      <TR>
217        <TD valign=top><i>New General Field<i></TD>
218        <TD>
219          A new field called <i>OS Distribution</i> has been added.
220          This field shows information about a particuliar distribution of
221          a version of an OS.  For instance, <b>Solaris 2.6 HW2 SPARC</b>.
222          </TD></TR>
223      <TR>
224        <TD valign=top><i>New and Improved SCSI Support<i></TD>
225        <TD>
226          The existing SCSI query support for SunOS has been greatly
227          improved and new information added.  The code is now generalized
228          and is now used on BSD/OS, FreeBSD, HP-UX, and IRIX.
229          </TD></TR>
230      <TR>
231        <TD valign=top><i>Improved Monitor Info<i></TD>
232        <TD>
233          SysInfo can now process
234          VESA Extend Display Identification Data (EDID) to provide lots
235          of information about monitors.  This information is so far only
236          available on Sun hardware.  See the
237          <a href="#sunedidnote">Sun EDID</a> note below.
238          </TD></TR>
239      <TR>
240        <TD valign=top><i>Improved PCI Device Info<i></TD>
241        <TD>
242          Information about PCI devices in general has been consolidated
243          and generalized across multiple OSs.  See <b>config/pci.cf</b>.
244          </TD></TR>
245      <TR>
246        <TD valign=top><i>HW+SW Disk Info<i></TD>
247        <TD>
248          SysInfo now differentiates between disk information (geometry, etc.)
249          obtained directly from the hardware (such as via a SCSI query) versus
250          what is obtained from the OS.  Output from "-level all"
251          is marked as "HW" for hardware
252          and "SW" for software.
253          </TD></TR>
254      <TR>
255        <TD valign=top><i>New RunTime Platform Check<i></TD>
256        <TD>
257          SysInfo now checks at runtime to make sure it's running on the
258          same platform (Kernel Arch, OS Name, OS Version) as it was
259          compiled on.
260          </TD></TR>
261      <TR>
262        <TD valign=top><i>New RunTime Root Check<i></TD>
263        <TD>
264            SysInfo now checks at runtime to make sure it's being run as
265            root (uid==0) on most platforms.  If it's not, a warning
266            message is issued.
267          </TD></TR>
268      <TR>
269        <TD valign=top><i>Performance Improvements<i></TD>
270        <TD>
271          Performance should be noticable improved, especially on systems
272          with lots of hardware.  Several key changes where made to how
273          SysInfo builds its list of devices which should reduce CPU and
274          the real amount of time it takes to run SysInfo.
275          </TD</TR>
276      <TR>
277        <TD valign=top><i>Reduced Stack, Buffer Handling<i></TD>
278        <TD>
279          A review of static buffer size usage was done and many items where
280          fixed.  A more comprehensive review should still be done.
281          </TD></TR>
282      <TR>
283        <TD valign=top><i>DOS FDISK Partitions on x86<i></TD>
284        <TD>
285          Generalized support for showing DOS
286          FDISK partition information on x86
287          machines was added.
288          </TD></TR>
289      <TR>
290        <TD valign=top><i>Sun dual port disks</i></TD>
291        <TD>
292          Dual ported disks on Sun's should now only show up once.
293          This code should work on all other platforms also, since it uses
294          the hardware device <i>Serial Number</i> to uniquely identify
295          each disk.
296          </TD></TR>
297
298    </TABLE>
299
300<h2><FONT COLOR="#000099"><a name="platnotes">Platform Specific Notes</a></FONT></h2>
301    <TABLE border=0 cellpadding=5>
302      <TR>
303        <TD valign=top><i>Solaris 7<i></TD>
304        <TD>
305Starting with Solaris 7 (SunOS 5.7),
306you will need two binaries for each
307version of the OS - one for 32-bit systems and one for 64-bit systems (all
308<b>Ultra</b> machines are 64-bit).
309You can check which version you are running by looking at the
310first line of <b>/etc/motd</b>
311for the phrase "64-bit".
312<p>
313To build a binary of <b>sysinfo</b> for a system running a 64-bit kernel,
314you must have a compatible compiler.  Sun Compiler 5.0 is the first Sun
315compiler to support this via the <b>-xarch=v9</b> option.  At the time
316this document was written there was no version of GCC which supports 64-bit
317compiles.
318</p>
319        </TD>
320      </TR>
321      <TR>
322        <TD valign=top><i><a name="sunedidnote">Sun/SPARC EDID</a><i></TD>
323        <TD>
324          VESA Extend Display Identification Data (EDID)
325          for monitors appears to only be available from Creator
326          Series 2 (FFB2) and later Creator frame buffers.  No sign of
327          EDID data
328          on any other Sun framebuffer so far.
329        </TD></TR>
330      <TR>
331        <TD valign=top><i><a name="linuxnotes">Linux</a><i></TD>
332        <TD>
333          There is no support for devices in SysInfo on Linux platforms at
334          this time.  This is due to lack of a consistant kernel interface for
335          acquiring such information.  The Linux core developers are aware
336          of this
337          lack and plan to add appropriate plumbing in a future Linux
338          kernel.  That is
339          likely to be Linux 2.4, but may not make that release.
340        </TD></TR>
341      <TR>
342        <TD valign=top><i>FreeBSD<i></TD>
343        <TD>
344          There is currently support for finding devices on PCI and ISA buses.
345          There is no EISA support.
346        </TD></TR>
347    </TABLE>
348
349    <hr>
350  </body>
351</html>
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