From: kar...@bsdi.com (Mike Karels)
Subject: Re: BSDI 4.0;-) & INN ?.?-)
Date: 1998/07/29
Message-ID: <199807292154.QAA28060@redrock.BSDI.COM>
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Several people have asked on the list about new features in BSD/OS 4.0.
We thought that we would post the description that we plan to publish
in the 4.0 release notes. We don't like to spam -- let us know if you
think this is an inappropriate use of the list.
Mike Karels, VP Engineering, BSDI
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
New Features of BSD/OS 4.0
Hardware: Multiprocessor Support
BSD/OS 4.0 is BSDI's first release including support for multiprocessors.
The system supports many Intel-standard MP systems. As this is
the initial release, there are several caveats. One is that in
the current version, at most one CPU can run system calls at a
time. This means that workloads with substantial user-load processing
in more than one process can benefit from additional CPUs, but
workloads with a large fraction of system (kernel) time may not
benefit at all. Another caveat is that hardware vendors seem to
have taken many liberties with the Intel MP spec, and getting some
of these systems running has taken some manual tweaking. Although
this facility is relatively new, and testing on many new MP systems
has required such tweaks, the system has been quite stable and
reliable once running on most systems. This feature has been
updated several times during the BSD/OS 4.0 beta test, and will
continue to change over the following months. For up-to-date
information, please see BSDI's web site
(http://www.bsdi.com/products/internet/mpmb).
Network
* NFS: Network Lock Manager, Network Status Manager
This feature consists of daemons to support the standard NFS lock
and status protocols. This means that BSD/OS will be able to do
file locking between it and other systems (e.g., Solaris) when the
filesystems on which they reside are mounted via NFS.
* IP security option (IPSEC), ISAKMP key-management server
Support authentication of IP packets. For domestic sites, it also
supports the encryption of IP packets.
* Virtual Private Network
BSD/OS 4.0 supports the ability to set up a Virtual Private Network
(VPN). In BSD/OS, a VPN is the ability to set up an authenticated
and/or encrypted tunnel between separate networks.
* IPv6 (next generation IP)
Version 6 of the IP protocol. The main feature of IPv6 is 128-bit
addresses, instead of the 32-bit IPv4 addresses.
* IP: Packet Filter
Flexible extensible IP Packet Filtering. The system supports
multiple simultaneous filtering mechanisms with filtering based on
the Berkeley Packet Filter (BPF) machine code. Two filtering points
allow the modification of incoming and outgoing packets. Filtering
of local packets (host machine is the source or destination) as
well as forwarded packets is supported. Filters may report packets
to the user level for logging or further processing (packets that
are very difficult to process may be filtered at user level at the
cost of some performance).
* IP: hashed address lookup for faster virtual hosting
The recognition of local IP addresses is now done with a hash table
instead of with a linear search. This will improve the performance
of systems with large numbers of virtual addresses.
* IP: statistics per virtual host
Packet and byte counts are now recorded for each IP address configured
on the system. This allows for the monitoring of usage by virtual
and real addresses. The netstat -is and systat -netstat output has
been updated to report these statistics.
* Frame Relay
Support for the Frame Relay protocol over synchronous serial
connections. Both DTE and DCE modes are supported, though DCE mode
packet switching is not yet supported.
* IPX/IP gateway (with BSDI Internet Client)
This consists of a proxy which runs as a daemon on the BSD/OS
machine and receives requests from IPX client machines for IP
services, which will be tunneled back to the client's BSDI supplied
winsock.dll via IPX. It allows clients on Novell Networks to have
access to the Internet and other TCP/IP based services without the
need to run multiple protocol stacks on the desktop PC, or managing
IP addresses for desktop clients. Since IP addresses are a finite
resource, and many Novell-based sites do not have the experience
or time to manage thousands of IP addresses in order to give users
access to some IP services, this feature can be very important to
some sites.
* NetCon/IPX: File Server (NetWare 3.12 File/Print compatible)
The core portion of the BSDI IPX services allows any BSD/OS system
to become either a Novell file and print server, or a Novell client
for file services. A five user license key can be obtained from
BSDI's web site. See the chapter on Configuring IPX/SPX Services
for more detailed information and information on how to get a
license key for more than five users. A typical use for this would
be allowing the sharing of file and print resources between Unix
and Novell systems. A single BSD/OS machine could serve files to
Unix machines with NFS and Novell clients via IPX. Any printer
defined in the OS system's printcap appears as a printer to Novell
clients. It should be noted that with IPX services installed and
running on a BSD/OS machine, it appears to be a Novell 3.12 server
to Novell systems (clients or servers).
* POSIX 1003.12 socket interface to networking, RFC 2133 support.
The socket networking interface has been modified to align with
draft 6.5 of the upcoming POSIX 1003.12 standard, plus some changes
from draft 6.6 as well as RFC 2133. New interfaces such as
getaddrinfo() have been added. This allows applications written to
the POSIX interface to be supported, as well as the thousands of
programs using the historical BSD socket interface.
File System Support
* Fast-Filesystem: Trickle sync
The release has replaced the historic `update' process with a new
`trickle sync' facility. This approach evens out the load on the
underlying I/O system and avoids writing short-lived files.
* Fast-Filesystem: Soft-dependency updates
The release contains a new experimental facility called soft
updates that allows the fast filesystem to eliminate most synchronous
writes without jeopardizing the integrity of the filesystem data.
Hardware: Drivers
* SCSI wide enabled for most SCSI host adapters and Ultra SCSI,
Various SCSI improvements.
Both aic and ncr now support Ultra. With non-wide drives this
allows transfer rates of 20 MB/s, with wide drives this allows
transfer rates of 40 MB/s.
It is now possible to designate a target as being a raid device,
and send more operations in parallel. This can significantly
improve performance on raid devices.
It is now possible to enable/disable sync, disconnect, Ultra, wide,
and tags on a per target basis. This allows the system to take
advantage of these features on other targets when a single defective
target exists.
* Blue Heat
This adds support for multiport serial cards using a PCI bus.
* Multispeed COM
A standard serial port cannot go higher than 115200 baud. This
new feature provides generic support for serial boards that give
N times clock speeds (e.g., 12x or 16x).
* Compaq NCR SCSI
We now use Compaq drivers to run the SCSI HBA's on Compaq machines,
in order to improve their performance.
* Compaq SMART-2 RAID
It is now possible to install and boot BSD/OS on logical disks
exported by the Compaq SMART-2 RAID controller. This allows users
to take advantage of the performance and reliability features of
the Compaq SMART-2 RAID controller. Compaq-provided, stand-alone
utilities are still used to configure the controller.
* AMD PCnet-PCI Ethernet
This is a new driver in 4.0, for 10Mb/s ethernet boards using the
AMD PCnet-PCI chipset. Some NE5500 clones use this chipset.
* Plug and Play for Ethernet, Modem and Sound Cards
We support PnP for the following:
3c509
3c508
Soundblaster 16
Wdc cards
Modem com ports
There are more devices showing up which only support PnP. This is
an initial cut at supporting the most needed PnP devices.
Other Kernel Changes
* ELF execution support
The system now executes ELF programs in addition to a.out and COFF
programs. Almost all programs on the system are now ELF programs, and
ELF is the default format for newly compiled programs.
* Lazy SPLs
The kernel no longer masks hardware events unless a hardware event
actually occurs, avoiding many expensive operations.
* IP checksum speed-ups
Many IPv4 checksums are now computed in-line with machine specific
code.
* Bootable CD-ROMs
It is now possible to build CD-ROMs that are directly bootable on
many CD-ROM drives.
* Kdebug and KTR
The system can now be configured with a small console debugger, and/or
extensive and extensible event tracing facilities.
Libraries
* ELF dynamic (and static) libraries
BSD/OS 4.0 provides dynamically linked versions of all of our
standard libraries. Dynamically linked ELF shared libraries and
shared objects are a widely used industry standard, and they are
much more flexible and maintainable than the statically linked
shared libraries.
* Assembly coded math library routines
On systems with hardware floating point, programs can use a version
of the standard math library (-lm) that implements many core
functions using hardware transcendental instructions.
* Enhancements to the BSD Authentication
BSD Authentication has been enhanced. Password expiration times
have been moved to the individual login scripts. Account expiration,
no-logins check and the home directory check have been moved to a
common routine used to approve a user after authenticating them.
Virtually all mechanisms of becoming a user (login, ftpd, ppp, etc)
now utilize the approval routines.
Programs
* X Server upgrade
We've upgraded our X11 distribution to X11R6.3. The major new
functionality in X11R6.3 is support for World Wide Web integration,
protection of data from "untrusted" client connections, a bandwidth-
and latency-optimized protocol for using X across the Internet, a
print protocol following the Xlib API, and support for vertical
text writing and user-defined characters in the Xlib implementation.
During the installation, you may now choose which X server you
prefer from a list of available servers. BSD/OS 4.0 provides a
commercial X server from Metro Link, Inc., as well as XFree86. If
upgrading from an earlier release that was licensed for the Xi
Graphics server, you may elect to keep that server. The Metro Link
server and the XFree86 server use new graphical installation
utilities.
* Enhanced GCC support
GCC 2 is the standard compiler. We now distribute GAS 2.8.1 as
the standard assembler; it has much broader opcode support and
fewer bugs.
* Netscape Navigator and Composer 4.0
BSD/OS 4.0 comes with a newer version of Netscape's Navigator
browser, and Netscape's Composer editor for HTML files.
* New sendmail
We ship sendmail 8.9.0.
* New ftpd
We ship a completely different ftpd, which we think is more secure,
better integrated and more functional than the old wu-ftpd. The
wu-ftpd sources are still provided with contributed code.
* Scsicmd: user-configurable command descriptions
The scsicmd program now uses a human-readable, modifiable table of
command descriptions rather than a compiled-in list of command data.
* MaxIM additions/improvements
MaxIM offers simplified configuration of virtual hosts for mail
and web servers. A Japanese version of MaxIM is now also available.
* Many upgrades to contributed software
We provide updated versions of many programs that we have integrated
into BSD/OS from customers and developers.
Bug Fixes
* Contributions from staff, customers and other developers
We have integrated many bug fixes from staff, customers and other
developers. LOTS of bugs have been retired.
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