Solaris Issues

Solaris Name Change

This release of Solaris is called Solaris 7 instead of Solaris 2.7. As the Solaris product line continues to grow, this name change will make it easier for you to determine which products in the Solaris line you might want to use.

In Solaris 7, the transition to the new name change is in progress. That means that you will still see references to Solaris 2.7, and even to Solaris 2.x.

The name of the core operating system has not changed. In this release, it is SunOS 5.7.

Euro Unit Support

Support for the new Euro currency has been added to the Units command. This new feature enables you to enter, display, and print the new Euro currency symbol. It also adds system support for monetary string formatting in Euros.

However, exchange rate conversion between the Euro and other currencies is not supported. This should be handled at the application level.

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) .

No Support for 3.3V

The pcic nexus driver for the PCMCIA interface does not support 3.3V on devices. Cards that are 3.3V only do not work correctly; they seem to hang a system. There are several related causes for this problem:

• The pcic driver cannot determine if it is a 3.3V only card (needs to read this information from the bus bridge and refuse to set 5V)

• The pcic driver cannot specify that 3.3V is needed

Some of the new PC cards are now available as 3.3V only. This includes variations of supported devices such as PC ATA and SRAM. New bus bridges, such as the TI PCI1130/1131, support 3.3V as well as 5V.