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SysInfoTM 3.5.1 Release Notes

Installation

Please read the Installation instructions for information on installing SysInfo.

New License

In order to fund future improvements to SysInfo, a new license scheme is introduced with version 3.5. The new license allows no-cost use by non-profit and educational institutions and requires payment for use by all other users. More information, including pricing is available by clicking here

SysInfo will automatically detect if it's being run on an educational or non-profit system if the domain name of the system is one of the known educational or non-profit domains. Currently this includes:

where CC is a country code. All other institutions must register and request a (free) license.

SysInfo will automatically allow 60-days of free use for demonstration purposes whenever run with no license found.

New Platform Support

Solaris 7 (SunOS 5.7) Full support for all Solaris 7 systems, including 64-bit (UltraSPARC) systems.
IRIX 6.5 Add support for IRIX 6.5.
Linux 2.0 on x86 This is the first version of SysInfo to include support for Linux. All but device (hardware) information is available. Linux 2.1 should also work, but hasn't been tested. See Linux Notes for more information.
FreeBSD on x86 Introducing support for FreeBSD on x86 systems. FreeBSD versions 2.2.x and 3.0 are supported.
BSD/OS on x86 Introducing support for BSDi's BSD/OS on x86 systems. BSD/OS 3.1 and 4.0 are supported.
HP-UX 11.0 Add support for HP-UX 11.0.

Supported Platforms

The following table indicates what platforms are supported for this release of SysInfo. This platform list is subject to change with each dot dot release of SysInfo.

SysInfo Class of Information
Man.OSHard- ware Gen- eralKer- nelSys- conf Dev- iceNotes
SunSolaris 1.x (SunOS 4.1.x)SPARC YYYY Not fully tested, but should work.
SunSolaris 2.x (SunOS 5.x)SPARC YYYY Solaris 2.5.1 - 7 (SunOS 5.5.1 - 5.7) verified working. See Platform Notes
SunSolaris 2.x (SunOS 5.x)x86 YYYY Solaris 2.6 (SunOS 5.6) tested on limited hardware.
IBMAIX 3.x, 4.xRS6000 YNYY  
SGIIRIX 5.3, 6.xMIPS YNYY IRIX 5.x may no longer work. Tested on IRIX 6.2 and 6.5.
HPHP-UX 9.x 10.x 11.xhp9000 YYNY  
 BSD/OS 3.1, 4.0x86 YYYY  
 FreeBSD 2.2.x, 3.0x86 YYYY See Platform Notes
 Linux 2.0x86 YYYP See Platform Notes
KEY:
Y - Yes, it's supported
N - No, it's not supported
P - Planned

Major New Features/Improvements

Changes from 3.5 to 3.5.1

Release 3.5.1 features improved support for FreeBSD 3.0 and fixes for a number of non-critical bugs as compared to release 3.5. Please read the CHANGES file for details.

Previous Releases

Please see the Version 3.5 Release Notes for information about that release.

Platform Specific Notes

Solaris 7 Starting with Solaris 7 (SunOS 5.7), you will need two binaries for each version of the OS - one for 32-bit systems and one for 64-bit systems (all Ultra machines are 64-bit). You can check which version you are running by looking at the first line of /etc/motd for the phrase "64-bit".

To build a binary of SysInfo for a system running a 64-bit kernel, you must have a compatible compiler. Sun Workshop C Compiler 5.0 is the first Sun compiler to support this via the -xarch=v9 option. At the time this document was written there was no version of GCC which supports 64-bit compiles.

Sun/SPARC EDID VESA Extend Display Identification Data (EDID) for monitors appears to only be available from Creator Series 2 (FFB2) and later Creator frame buffers. No sign of EDID data on any other Sun framebuffer so far.
Linux There is no support for devices in SysInfo on Linux platforms at this time. This is due to lack of a consistant kernel interface for acquiring such information. The Linux core developers are aware of this lack and plan to add appropriate plumbing in a future Linux kernel. That is likely to be Linux 2.4, but may not make that release.
FreeBSD There is currently support for finding devices on PCI and ISA buses. There is no EISA support.