Solaris 7 3/99 Online Release Notes (SUNWrdm)

Chapter 7 Documentation Issues

Documentation Errata

Documentation Errata for the Solaris 7 Developer Collection

Book Affected: Federated Naming Service Programming Guide in the Solaris 7 Software Developer Collection

The Federated Naming Service Programming Guide is not included in the Solaris 7 Software Developer Collection (SUNWabsdk package) on the Solaris 7 Documentation CD. The Guide may be found in the Solaris 7 Software Developer Collection on http://docs.sun.com.

Documentation Errata for the XIL Developer Documentation Web Address

Book Affected: 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:

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."

Adding SUNWhinst To Support SunOS Release 4.x on a Solaris 7 Server

Book Affected: Solaris Transition Guide

As explained in "Adding SunOS Release 4.x Support to a Solaris 2.7 Server" in Solaris Transition Guide, the SUNWhinst package must be installed on any Solaris 7 server configured to support SunOS 4.x diskless clients. The SUNWhinst package is available on the Solaris Easy Access Server 2.0 software CD in the AdminSuite_2.3+AutoClient_2.1/4.x directory.

Euro Currency Support

Books Affected: Solaris 7 (SPARC Platform Edition) Installation Library and the Solaris 7 (Intel Platform Edition) Installation Library

In the section titled "New User Locales To Support the Euro Currency" in the Solaris 7 (SPARC Platform Edition) Installation Library or the Solaris 7 (Intel Platform Edition) Installation Library, the Euro Currency Support section states that there are sixteen new user locales for the new Euro currency. There are actually fifteen, as shown in "New User Locales To Support the Euro Currency" in the Solaris 7 (SPARC Platform Edition) Installation Library or the Solaris 7 (Intel Platform Edition) Installation Library.

x86 only: Documentation Errata for a New Tunable Kernal Base

Books Affected: System Administration Guide, Vol. II for the section titled "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.

x86 only: Additional Devices for x86-Based Systems

Book Affected: Solaris 7 (Intel Platform Edition) Device Configuration Guide in the Solaris 7 Installation Collection.

x86 only: SunOS 5.7 ncrs(7D) man page Is Out-Of-Date

man page Affected: ncrs(7D)

The SunOS 5.7 ncrs(7D) man page is out-of-date. A synopsis of the new functionality is provided here; an updated ncrs(7D) man page is available at Driver Developer Site located at http://www.sun.com/developers/driver.

The ncrs Host Bus Adapter driver is a SCSI-compliant nexus driver that supports the Symbios 53c810, 53c815, 53c820, 53c825, 53c860, 53c875, and 53c895 SCSI chips. It supports the standard functions provided by the SCSI interface: tagged and untagged queuing, Wide/Fast/Ultra SCSI, and autorequest sense, but it does not support linked commands.

The ncrs driver can be configured by defining properties in ncrs.conf. These properties override the global SCSI settings. ncrs supports these properties, which can be modified by the user: -scsi-options, -target-scsi-options, -scsi-reset-delay, -scsi-tag-age-limit, -scsi-watchdog-tick, and -scsi-initiator-id.

n -target-scsi-options overrides the -scsi-options property value for target. n can vary from decimal 0 to 15. ncrs supports these scsi-options:

After periodic interval -scsi-watchdog-tick, the ncrs driver searches through all current and disconnected commands for time outs.

-scsi-tag-age-limit is the number of times that the ncrs driver attempts to allocate a particular tag ID that is currently in use after going through all tag IDs in a circular fashion. After finding the same tag ID in use -scsi-tag-age-limit times, no more commands will be submitted to this target until all outstanding commands complete or time out.


Note -

The ncrs hardware (53c895/53c875) supports Wide, Fast, and Ultra SCSI modes. The maximum SCSI bandwidth is 40 MB/sec.

Note that UltraTM SCSI is disabled by default; to enable it, edit the ncrs.conf file and set the scsi-options property to 0x1ff8.


x86 only: Documentation Errata for Configuration Assistant Menu

Book affected: System Administration Guide, Volume I

Product affected: Configuration Assistant

In the first screen in the section "x86: Configuration Assistant Menu" in the System Administration Guide, Volume I:

  1. Change the phrase "add a Driver Update" to "add a driver."

  2. Replace the two subsequent occurrences of "Driver Update" with "Add Driver."