Date: Thu, 21 Dec 1995 09:22:47 +0800 (HKT) From: John Beukema <john@gateway.net.hk> To: FreeBSD hackers <hackers@FreeBSD.ORG> Subject: BSD/OS 2.1 and BSDI information (fwd) Message-ID: <Pine.BSD/.3.91.951221092159.29773A-100000@gateway.net.hk>
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FYI jbeukema ---------- Forwarded message ---------- Date: Wed, 20 Dec 1995 16:04:51 -0600 From: Mike Karels <karels@BSDI.COM> To: bsdi-users@BSDI.COM Subject: BSD/OS 2.1 and BSDI information This message is being sent to the bsdi-users mailing list to provide information about the upcoming BSD/OS 2.1 release and other BSDI news. A similar message will also be sent to each of our customers (using the most recent email address in our database). The 2.0 release has been out for some time, and the 2.0.1 upgrade came out about August. We have been working on many parts of the system in the meantime, and the 2.1 release is now imminent. It has been in beta test since early November, and the final beta is just going out. We will begin shipping 2.1 in January. Note that it will probably take us several weeks to ship all of the upgrades. I have an outline of changes in 2.1, including new drivers, which I will include here. The information is less detailed than I would like, but should give folks some idea of what we have been working on. The main two areas of concentration: easier installation and upgrades, and additional device drivers. The drivers include support for additional SCSI host adapters (Adaptec and NCR), FDDI, 10 and 100 Mb/s PCI and EISA Ethernet, ATAPI (IDE CD-ROM), additional serial multiport cards, token ring, and improved sound card support. The release also includes many bug fixes, including a fix for the so-called "swap leak" that affected long-running processes that forked periodically. New features include support for additional authentication methods, and a new facility that can be used to set up different account parameters, including resource limits, for different classes of users. BSDI has been growing fairly rapidly in the past year. We now have five full-time support people, in addition to the support work handled by engineers when problems are escalated. BSDI is committed to building the support team to keep ahead of growing sales and increasing load in order to continue our high-quality support. The office staff has also grown to handle the increased telephone, shipping and administrative load. We have added several more world-class engineers too. I don't remember which of these hires have been announced on this list, so I'll mention them now: Eric Varsanyi joined us when Cray Computer shut down (not Cray Research!). Keith Bostic, formerly of the UC Berkeley Computer Systems Research Group, joined us in May. Jeff Honig started working for us this month, after many years working for the Gated Consortium at Cornell. I am pleased that BSDI has been able to build such a fine team, and I'm looking forward to the progress that this team will make in the next year. Mike Karels BSDI System Architect & V.P. Engineering -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= BSD/OS 2.1 Features and Changes This is a partial list of changes in the BSD/OS 2.1 release since the 2.0 and 2.0.1 releases. Easier installation: Only one boot floppy choose Express or Custom install for Express install, installation is much simplified; only 3 questions need be answered to install the software. Custom install allows more flexibility, is also easier than 2.0. Easy upgrade installation from 2.0 and 2.0.1; express upgrade updates all installed packages in place. Installation and configuration scripts look snazzier. Additional driver support: SCSI Drivers: NCR PCI/SCSI driver now supports 53C825 as well as 53C810, 53C815, 53C820; wide drives currently run in narrow mode; improved error recovery Adaptec PCI, EISA SCSI: AHA-2940, 2940W PCI cards AHA-2740, 2740W, 2742, 2742W EISA cards AHA-2740AT, 2742AT twinchannel EISA cards (only one channel supported) AIC-7850, 7870-series chips on motherboard wide drives currently run in narrow mode Adaptec 1542CF, 1542CP (with Plug and Play disabled on CP) removable-media drives now configure as separate device class (/dev/sr* rather than /dev/sd*) targets 8-15 not currently supported with wide SCSI ATAPI (IDE CD-ROM; IDE tape is untested) Improved IDE performance (now supports multiple sectors per interrupt) New network drivers: PCI Ethernet (10 and 100 mb/s) DEC 21040, 21140 based: DEC DE435, DE434, DE450, DE500 SMC EtherPower and EtherPower 10/100 SMC EtherPower2 (dual 10 mb/s) other compatible cards 3COM 3C590, 3C595 EISA Ethernet (10 and 100 mb/s) 3COM 3C592, 3C597 FDDI: DEC DEFPA (PCI) and DEFEA (EISA) (CDDI, single attach fiber, and dual attach fiber) Token ring IBM TRA 16/4 3COM 3C619B TokenLink III 16/4, and other TROPIC based cards SMC 8115T TokenCard Elite SDL RISCom/N2 synchronous interface with integral CSU/DSU Wireless Ethernet (Arlan) DEC ISA/EISA Ethernet (included but not supported): Digital EtherWORKS II, EtherWORKS II Turbo, EtherWORKS III: DEPCA, DE100, DE101, DE200, DE201, DE202 (all ISA), and DE422 (EISA)) New serial board drivers: DigiBoard PC/Xr Cyclades Cyclom-Y Chase IOPRO Specialix Host 2.x (SIPLUS) Comtrol Rocketport VOXWare audio drivers: supports CD quality 16 bit stereo playback and recording (if the hardware is capable), the standard /dev/audio interface, MIDI, FM synth, and audio mixer chips. Drivers for most common sound cards are included: SoundBlaster 1.0 to 2.0, SoundBlaster Pro, SoundBlaster 16 Gravis Ultrasound, Ultrasound+ (16 bit), Ultrasound Max Pro Audio Spectrum 16 MPU401, 6850, and SB midi Yamaha OPL2, OPL3, and OPL4 synthesizers Microsoft Sound System Note: Some of the drivers listed were provided by third parties, and some of them will be supported by third parties. Sound drivers other than SoundBlaster are currently unsupported. Other improvements: Virtual memory improvements "swap leak" fixed (affected daemons that fork periodically) deadlock with heavy use of mapped files fixed Swap devices can be added "on the fly" Shared libraries use less memory (reorganized to save on page tables) support for dynamic linking (System V-compatible dlopen/dlsym functions) User classes Passwd file lists class for each user Per-class limits, priorities, restrictions Separate authentication and authorization Additional authentication schemes: cryptographic tokens: cryptocard, activecard, snk004 one-time passwords PPP improvements tcpdump now works with PPP IP multicast upgraded to version 3.8, supports "pruning" Lots of other improvements and fixes (hundreds of bug reports closed)
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