************************************************************************ Solaris(TM) 7 New Feature Descriptions (805-3222-10) ************************************************************************ Copyright 1998 Sun Microsystems, Inc., 901 San Antonio Road, Palo Alto, California 94303 U.S.A. All rights reserved. ************************************************************************* Copyright 1998 Sun Microsystems, Inc., 901 San Antonio Road, Palo Alto, Californie 94303 Etats-Unis. Tous droits réservés. ************************************************************************* This file is part of the SUNWrdm package and contains a list of new product news and features that arrived too late to be included in the "What's New In Solaris 7", section of the "Solaris 7 Information Library" manual. Also included in the SUNWrdm package are the following files: o installation_bugs file with known installation problems. This file contains duplicate information that is also included in the "Solaris(TM) 7 (SPARC(TM) Platform Edition) Release Notes and the "Solaris 7 (Intel Platform Edition) Release Notes" o runtime_bugs file with known runtime problems o eof file with end of software support statements o integrated_patches file that lists already released as well as preliminary patches, and includes CERT Advisories that have been fixed in the Solaris 7 release o driverupdate file with late-breaking information about drivers Find additional late-breaking installation and runtime bug descriptions, new feature statements, end-of-software statements, as well as information for driver updates and patches in the "Solaris 7 (SPARC Platform Edition) Release Notes" and in the "Solaris 7 (Intel Platform Edition) Release Notes." Go to http://docs.sun.com to locate both documents. To find out more about Sun Microsystems, Inc., see http://www.sun.com. Typographical Conventions _________________________ o Manual titles contain quotation marks before and after the title, for example: "Solaris Advanced User's Guide" o Text you must type is set apart and indented, for example: Type: stty sane to reset the terminal to lowercase. o Variables are in angle brackets, for example: cp /net/server/home/user/ /tmp/ _______________________ How to Search This File _______________________ You can use any of several editors, like vi and Text Editor, to search this file for key words. If you are using the vi editor to search for key words and need help, the "Solaris Advanced Installation Guide" and the vi man page provide overviews of vi commands and information on refining your search. NOTE: When using vi, be aware that searches are case-sensitive. You can speed up your search by setting the file to ignore uppercase and lowercase characters. To ignore case during a search, type: :set ignorecase Certain special characters (| & ! . ^ * $ \) are commands. If used within search strings, they must be preceded by an escape character to be included in a search. To escape a special character, precede it with a backslash (\). If you are in the OpenWindows(TM) environment and using the text editor to search for keywords and need help, see the "Solaris User's Guide" or refer to the textedit man page. To open the text editor window through menu options, choose Text Editor from the Programs menu in Workspace. You can also double-click on the text file icon in the File Manager or, at the command line, type: textedit & NOTE: The name of this product is Solaris 7 but code and and path or package path names may use Solaris 2.7 or SunOS 5.7. Always follow the code or path as it is written. ______________ 64-Bit Solaris ______________ --------------------------------------------------------------------- SPARC only: 64-Bit Assembler Instructions --------------------------------------------------------------------- The bundled assembler on SPARC systems has been updated to support assembling both 32-bit and 64-bit SPARC assembler programs. The supported instruction sets include SPARC V8, SPARC V9, and the UltraSPARC-specific Visual Instruction Set (VIS) instructions. --------------------------------------------------------------------- Updated Version of the Java(TM) Development Kit --------------------------------------------------------------------- The Java Development Kit (JDK), bundled with this release, has been updated to version 1.1.6. In addition to providing greater stability, this version offers significant performance improvements for certain types of applications (like applications that are computationally intensive) due to a number of optimizations made to the JIT compiler. This version also includes support for large files. Java classes and methods can now access files greater than or equal to 2 GBytes without any API changes. As a result, a Java application run with this version of the JDK will now be able to access large files. --------------------------------------------------------------------- Updated Security In Sendmail --------------------------------------------------------------------- Solaris 7 software includes Sendmail version 8.9.1. In this version, some security checks are tightened by default. For example, forwarding files, .forward, or alias files specified with :include: may need some modification to work properly with this Solaris release. See the Mail Administration Guide for more information. --------------------------------------------------------------------- Multi-threaded-hot malloc --------------------------------------------------------------------- libmtmalloc provides an alternative dynamic memory allocator for multi-threaded applications. The library provides the traditional API for heap management, malloc, calloc, realloc and free. Unlike libc malloc, libmtmalloc provides concurrent access to the heap-managed area, providing higher performance for a key system utility. To use this library you must link your application -lmtmalloc. Note that -lmtmalloc must appear on the link line prior to linking with libc -lc. For more information, see the man page 3t malloc. -------------------------------------------------------------------- Processor Interrupt Control -------------------------------------------------------------------- Processor interrupt control can be used by system administrators and developers of real-time applications to control interrupt distribution in a multiprocessor system. It can improve the performance of applications running on the processors where interrupts were disabled. It enables users to disable most interrupts on specified processors. This can be done by using the psradm(1m) command or p_online(2) system call for individual processors, or using the psrset(1m) command for all processors in a processor set. For more information see the man pages, psradm(1m), p_online(2), and psrset(1m) -------------------------------------------------------------------- Doc Errata for the Solaris 7 Installation Library -------------------------------------------------------------------- In the What's New chapter, "Software Developer Environment," the XIL developer documentation web address has changed to http://www.sun.com/software/imaging. Also, the XIL developer components no longer contain these documents: o The XIL man pages describing the use of the XIL API o The XIL Programmer's Guide The XIL runtime libraries and header remain in Solaris to ensure continuing support for applications employing XIL. The sentence, "XIL is adding support for stereoscopic image display.", should read, "XIL has added support for stereoscopic image display." -------------------------------------------------------------------- Doc Errata for the System Administration Guide, Vol. II for the Section "Managing System Performance" -------------------------------------------------------------------- In Solaris 7 (Intel Platform Edition), there is a new tunable called kernel base that can be used by system administrators to change the maximum size of kernel or user space. Intel x86 and compatible processors support only 4GB of virtual address space. By default, in the Solaris operating environment, this is divided into 3.5 GB for user processes and 512 MB for the Solaris kernel. This may not be appropriate for certain workloads. For example, a kernel-based network cache accelerator can benefit from a larger virtual address space for the kernel, while a system with 4GB of physical memory running transaction processing operations using an RDBMS such as Oracle may want to increase space for user processes. System administrators can change the default allocation through the kernel base property. kernel base defines the beginning of kernel address space; its default value is 0xE0000000. Lowering kernel base below 0xC0000000 makes a system non-ABI compliant and some ABI-compliant user programs may not run. Use eeprom(1M) to set the tunable kernel base to the desired value (in hexadecimal). The change takes effect when the system is rebooted.